Jezebel: Final Edit
by ibizababy
Summary: Rewrite of "Let Us Prey". Finished Edition. Synopsis: In the midst of the Mikaelson Prophecy Klaus's ex-beloved, a scorned teenage revenant from 200 years beforehand, returns to town with the intent to set the record straight. What will the Mikaelsons do when they find out the very same Prophecy is a result of her own probable demise?
1. Persona Non Grata

TRISTAN

Marcellus' suspicion rings through the cell phone that afternoon. "So this is your version of asking me something nicely? It's an invitation."  
He's right on top of it.  
"I believe Aya told you a bit about The Strix, Marcellus... Who we are, what we're capable of. Every few years, we gather to celebrate our status as the most elite creatures in the world, and in the rare instance we feel we've identified someone worthy of our attention, we choose to reach out," I explain to him.  
"You think I'm interested?" he laughs at me.  
My grin widens as I look out the window of the car. "You haven't hung up. I understand you fostered quite a community here in New Orleans. We can offer you something more global... Resources, access, power. You're a born leader, Marcel. Why stop at just one city?"  
"Maybe I'm happy with what I've got," Marcel wants to convince himself.  
"I doubt that, but if I've failed to coax you, just disregard this call. Though if you feel you'd be worthy of joining our ranks, don't be late to the party tonight." I hang up.  
I feel triumphant having wavered Marcel's path in this sire line war. As the son of that most dreadful family, his allegiance will welcome the time for the Mikaelsons to learn not everyone loves them as much as they believe. My head is pounding. I need blood.  
The chauffeur helps me from my car while a few awaiting members of my Strix take the bags from my car. Delaney manhandles the briefcase I've marked fragile. I rip it from his hand, holding it accordingly whilst I gaze at him tediously.  
"Can you read?" I snap before walking inside.  
As I gaze around the villa that will harbor my visitation, Aya approaches me with a thin smile on her face.  
"Have you got her?" She wonders.  
I hold the briefcase at eye level, and Mohinder carefully opens the large padlocks. I gesture one of our trusted witches over to remove the imprisonment spell I ordered to be put on this hazardous weapon. Aya gently opens the top of the luggage, frowning at the contents before me.  
"Lovely, isn't it?" I purr.  
I grab her wrist before she can touch the fine antique inside.  
"A plastic vinyl? You said you were bringing the weapon," doubtfully, she reminds me.  
"Willingly or forcefully. You're looking upon her," I smirk.  
The vinyl record has been written on, scratched, discolored, but the tune remains untouched.  
"This vinyl holds the earliest criterion of a witch known to man. Lethal, demonizing... She is what we need to to keep the Strix on top; she must be kept under our watchful eye at all times," I announce.  
Several vampires maneuver around us, preparing for my stay.  
"You have the power to say such things when you know someone as such," Aya hints.  
I nod softly. The memory is unpleasant and a horrific picture, but I haven't the time to draw regret from it.  
"Well, once we've had the pleasure, we'll be able to gauge how accurate her value is," I murmur.  
I shut the briefcase forcefully, handing it over to Mohinder.  
"Guard it with your life. And should you have any inducing hallucinations or cravings—don't worry. She does that." With that, I apply a harsh pat on his upper back to reassure him of where I put my trust, and I take my leave.  
I'll be needing a suit.

MARCEL

I don't think the invitation has left my hand all day. I'm still staring down at it. It depicts a regal and wise night owl, but really, it's just a condescending way to put ornamentation on the Strix's name. Am I going? I'm against it, but if Elijah's gonna keep looking down on me like he does, I will accept just to find out what my options are.  
Somewhere in my mind, I almost think things could be alright tonight. The suit I was gifted fit fine in an almost creepy way. Klaus has been preoccupied with an old friend at the Compound and Elijah will be showing up tonight at the ball. He'll just love seeing me here.  
When I arrive at midnight on the dot, I find myself being watched by five extensive units of security at the front gates of the rented villa. Aya comes to my rescue and lets me inside.  
"Forgive the high precaution. We're a private people," Aya notifies me.  
That is quite the lackluster excuse to have fifteen tuxes loitering outside a double door entrance. Privacy could be mistaken for a disturbed hybrid who was uninvited. Aya gestures to a burly guy beside her.  
She introduces us, "Marcel, I'd like you to meet my mentor Mohinder. He taught me everything I know about combat."  
"Oh, if that's the case, then I am impressed," I say.  
After all, she took me down with a tiny scratch on the neck. It's one of my new favorite party tricks.  
She keeps talking, "As part of his discipline, he drinks only the blood of vampires he's vanquished in combat. He can go weeks without feeding, yet suffer no effects of hunger, such is his control over body and mind."  
I really can only nod to that, looking around and ready to make the small talk compliment of the party's complexity. My eyes land on Elijah, who is watching me from across the room. A clinking noise interrupts our staring contest. Tristan wants to say something, taking a glamorous step into the center of the venue.  
"Distinguished friends, welcome. It's so rare that we're able to come together like this to revel for one night in the company of true equals. Now I'd like to take a moment to welcome a very special guest, Mr. Marcel Gerard," Tristan declares.  
His hand slowly straightens out to guide their gazes to me. There's clapping and my gratitude is silent.  
He waits for it to stop before he says anything more. "Of course, before we tell Marcel all of our secrets, there's one small piece of business to which we must first attend. We must determine his worth."  
I draw my head back hearing this. Determine my worth? What in the hell does that mean?  
"That's funny. I seem to recall you being the one knocking on my door," I claim.  
"You'll notice, Mr. Gerard, that over the course of the evening someone has managed to take something quite dear to you... Your daylight ring," Tristan smiles back at me.  
I look down and he's right. The ring is no longer on my right middle finger.  
He talks down to me likes I don't already understand what is about to happen. "You need to deduce the identity of the thief. Then you are simply to take back what is yours... Although, I doubt the prize will be easily relinquished. After all, despite our refinement, we're still a rather violent bunch. In victory, you become one of us. In failure, you meet your death. You have a few hours until dawn. I wish you the best of luck."  
I needed something strong to impair my stress. I should have expected this. There is no such thing as a vampire, or a group of them for that matter, that doesn't play games. It wasn't a test of my worth–it was a test of my honesty. I know they're suspicious of me.  
"I could have warned you," someone says from beside me at the bar.  
It's Elijah, drinking his favorite scotch and expecting me to speak my apologies.  
I lick my lips, calmly answering him, "Look. I didn't tell you I was coming tonight because..."  
He finishes for me. "I wouldn't have allowed it."  
He makes it so hard to feel like a mutual adult sometimes.  
"There's that word... 'Allowed.' You know, I thought I'd earned the right to be considered an equal, but that's not the way it works in your family, so it's time I consider my options. If nothing else, The Strix aren't interested in me as a sidekick," I point out to him.  
"These options, as you describe them, are a death sentence. I suppose I shall have to intervene. It is a shame. I expect it shall ruin my tuxedo. I have had this suit for over a hundred years. It's proven far more reliable than you, Marcellus," he replies.  
I shake my head. "Relax, all right? I got this under control."  
"Do you?" he imitates a parental tone.  
I don't have to answer that.  
The Villa of the party has a nice garden. It's only two in the morning. The sky is still holding onto the last crumbs of sunlight. It reminds me of the pictures in a book I stole from my master when I was young. The Alphabet of Ben Sira. I was learning how to read, and if it weren't for that picture of the Garden of Eden, I'd have lost interest.  
I hear the quiet pat of footsteps behind me next.  
I almost jump when I turn around. I'm facing a beautiful young woman whose extravagantly tan face is bathed in the dewy cobalt skylight, her eyes dark and menacing.  
"Tristan send you out here to give me a clue?" I scoff.  
She holds something out in her small palm; her hands are covered in henna and her nails look so sharp they might be talons. She has my sunlight ring.  
I reach for it, but it transforms into a small black insects that crawls around her wrist and all the way up her arm.  
"Who are you?" I urge.  
She vanishes when I attempt to look back into her face. I find her in the doorway across from me, eerily watching me before dragging her fingertips around the curve of the archway. I hear the scratching sounds they make on the clay walls. She wants me to follow her. I try to meet her in the hallway before she gets too far, but what I see instead is much more unexpected. The villa has become empty. If it really is as desolate as I'm seeing it, where are the whispers coming from?  
"Elijah?" Mistrustful, I call out.  
Pure silence abruptly meets my ears. I can't even hear a trumpet in the distance. I place my naked hand on the wall beside me to help me maneuver through the dark space in the hallway. My loafers meet a big puddle. I think someone may have spilled their wine at first, but the farther I walk, the deeper this puddle gets. It smells of old tree sap. I'm walking through a flooded house; magic is at work here. I step back quickly when something long and fast swims past my shins. It hisses at my quick actions. Intimidated, I glance down the hallway. The woman, in her squalid underdress, is walking up the staircase.  
"That's enough!" I shout to her. "You can tell Tristan he's taking it too far!"  
If Tristan even is responsible for this. I trudge through the dark water carefully, and the closer I get to the dry grand stairway, the louder another hiss begins to get. It multiplies. I rip my hand off the railing when I notice that it has become home to a knot of snakes. I hurry up the stairway, catching a glimpse of a little white foot just exiting the last step at the top.  
"Hey!" I call again.  
All the doors upstairs are closed except for one. It is alive with cool natural light and opened all the way to the wall beside it. I approach one step per second. I don't see a single body in the room. All there is to be found is an outdated phonograph holding my daylight ring around its spindle. I shake off my wet shoes, until I find that they're not wet at all.  
The illusion has ended, but my ring still waits to take a seat around my finger. I take it with careful consideration, looking around carefully.  
Shnk. The small padlock on the briefcase beside my hand falls open. Fragile, the briefcase reads. I remove the lock and open the confidential storage, first looking over my shoulder for an audience, and then at the ridiculous find sitting on green velvet. Just some bizarrely marked up vinyl.  
I scoff, handling it casually and turning it over in my hands. A series of warnings scribbled and cut into the grooves will prevent the user from even being able to hear a single note correctly. Tristan might just be a hoarder; not surprising for a guy who likes to seem clean cut. Does it even work? I set it on the spindle, pressing and turning dials until the needle meets the outer ring of grooves. I jump, clutching my ears falsely when it starts off with the sounds of screaming and shouting—like human torture. It doesn't last for long as the guitars strum freely and the drums pound out repetitive ornamentation. "Catalina"... By Vallejo, I think. A classic.  
I slide my ring back on and watch it play for a few more seconds before I hit the pause switch. Not much of a treasure, but I guess Tristan is someone's groupie after all.  
I'm standing at the door frame when the song suddenly restarts. I turn around, and there is a thick black line that is spilling off the record player and growing by the second. Its hoard of dark beetles, reptiles, and ghostly shadows form a small hill; I approach it against my conscience.  
A dainty, tattooed hand makes a thudding sound on the creaking floorboards as it outstretches from the weaving pile of scales. Two hands. A shoulder. One head of hair. A torso and an abdomen. I take a step back to watch this unfold. Seductively, her hair falls over her breasts and the left side of her face. She rolls her neck to work out the crunchy knots that come with being enslaved to a–magic vinyl. The last reptile slips up her hip and into her hair. When she opens her eyes, they land on me. She's unclothed and just went through an entire metamorphosis. Not sure where I want to start a conversation. I'll start with this, I guess.  
"How long you been on there?" I ask.  
Her fingers reach up to touch a metallic liquid scrolling down the apples of her cheeks, wiping it away gracefully.  
"A while," she answers.  
Her fingers make popping noises as she wiggles them softly in the moonlight. Her eyes are two different colors, one overfilled with amber tones and the other glowing in the dark like green liquid neon. She comes away from the arms of darkness, gripping my chin and scanning my features. She makes a noise of enjoyment.  
"I bet you don't get a lot of gratitude for meddling, Marcellus," she gratifies me with a tincture of a Hispanic accent in her voice and a tired, cold smile on her lips. "But I'll remember this."  
I groan as her nails rake at my chest and briskly burst through my elastic skin, grabbing at my heart and squeezing until I pass out.

ELIJAH

I knew tonight would somehow be rudely interrupted. I'm staring in the face of my drunken brother and his supposed friend, Lucien. The girls are indecent, just as I usually see them anywhere near either of these men. Without the intent to be so obvious, I observe of the masked dames creep away and up a nearby staircase while Niklaus ensures to make a mess of things.  
Niklaus starts shouting, "Tristan? Tristan! Come out, come out, wherever you are! Unless, of course, you're afraid!"  
"Niklaus," I sigh, stepping forward.  
He turns in an ungraceful manner to face me. I immediately know this childlike side of my brother.  
"Oh, you're hammered. Which should come as a very little surprise to anyone here, but it does hamper the festivities somewhat. So, could I recommend that you find the nearest exit?" I requested, "Could you take your playthings with you, too?"  
Klaus shoves his champagne glass into my hands, staggering farther into the ballroom.  
"You know, I used to find it insulting that I was barred from your special little club. But now, I realize that I lack the flexibility to become a member—I could never get my head far enough up my own ass," he slurs at the crowd.  
He bows and I exchange irritable glances. Lucien and their companions were delighted by Klaus' behavior. Nik walks back to me and takes the glass from my hand, downing the rest of the champagne.  
"Come on. Let's go. This party's dead anyway," Lucien called.  
I need air. I'm walking toward the gardens, but I stop when I hear a very alarming notice given to Aya by a servant.  
"It's gone," the woman tells Aya.  
I stop just behind the wall faces the staircase.  
"What?" Aya hisses.  
The woman clarifies, "The ring. I gave it to Mohinder as you ordered, but he thinks it may have already been stolen from his pocket. No one can find it."  
It brings a bit of a smile to my face. Just then, Marcel is coming down the staircase in a daze. He's looking down at his ring carefully.  
"You've taken it back and avoided the final test. How very admirable. We're leaving," I state abruptly.  
Marcel swallows, "We need to talk. I think Tristan has a new friend, and–"  
"The time has come!" Tristan's voice bellows.  
Marcel is hesitant to follow Tristan anywhere, but the reassuring look he gives me tells me I don't have to follow. It could cause a greater push for him to join them if I go.  
I can hear what goes on from downstairs, enjoying wine at the bar like that's all I need in this moment. Marcel claims the ring was found on the floor of the ballroom, but he knows exactly who took it.  
"I'm sorry, but I did not take your—"  
Marcel disrupts Aya. "Hold on, I didn't say it was you. You were just the middle woman. You slipped it off my finger when I arrived, and then you passed it onto Mohinder...the first member of the Strix I met tonight."  
Their voices are hollow from far away. I imagine him turning to Mohinder, hidden among thieves. I take a casual stroll through hired dancers, party-crashers and staring acquaintances.  
"Of course, as you know, that's only half the battle," Tristan assures Marcellus.  
I take my time going up the stairs. The electricity suddenly filters in and out of consciousness. The flickers startle some guests. Mohinder paces on thin floorboards.  
"There's no shame in dying at the hands of your superior," says he.  
Marcel scoffs, "Not much glory in it, either."  
Crash. The noise is loud, like a car ramming through someone's dwelling. I prefer to wait until it ends, but then there's a roar of a man in pain. I rush to the scene, worried it very well is Marcel, unprotected against the vile manners of my vampires. But it's not him.  
Seven vampires lie dead and pale out in the hallway. Marcel huddles in the corner of the room, wiping blood off his lip. Tristan De Martel has cowered to the floor, Aya and Mohinder hastening to his side. I'm not frightened. I take a step back when something moves against my newly shined loafers. It's too dark to be a hallucination of the floor, it moves too quickly and too oddly to call it a mere shoelace. It's a snake. Marcel is only viewing the creature disappear out into the party. I turn to see it off, but it evaporates into the air before my exhausted eyes. Tristan cusses under his breath as he lifts up his pant leg. The bite is swollen, graying and oozing a black liquid."Who let her out..." Tristan begins to shout. "Who let her go!"The remaining vampires exchange glances. Aya turns to a dim item behind her on a desk, then glances about the room."Notify the security and search the party. Don't let her escape," she calmly commands.A slightly wounded Marcel skims the rim of the room and uses me for support. I escort him out before anyone can stop us. The vampires downstairs are taking turns staring at the staircase because they all know their leader is wounded. Marcel grips the staircase railing before reach the bottom. I follow his gaze. A tall man in black clothes watches us, turning away and rushes down a zig-zag path of people, out the door.∞

Later on in the night, Marcellus and I haven't had the chance to even consider what happened only an hour beforehand. We simply ogle at each other from opposite ends of the Abattoir courtyard, above the scene in which Lucien sits beside his young and tired foreseer. They were having a brief moment of reunion, whereas Freya had brought her back to us—it doesn't matter how ethical of a plan she had. In which there was a silence, I filled the room with the sound of explanation over talking to Marcel about it first. I don't think either of us could interpret it, anyway. Perhaps, Niklaus or Freya could.  
"A daylight ring returned by a venomous snake. Did it also ask of you to take a bite out of an apple?" Klaus jokes bitterly.  
His eyes are narrowed in the direction of Marcel. He appears as though he might be holding onto something more that occurred tonight.  
"Do not think it a coincidence, that creature sent Tristan into a panic. We need to trace the origin of the vermin—that manifestation. I have a feeling there is a party discounted seeking to undermine the Strix. And it looks as though were already at each other's necks," I suggest.  
"It was the ghost," Marcel confesses without looking up from his whiskey.  
Klaus turns his head towards him.  
Marcel swallows, "He had a spirit, a girl on this...enchanted vinyl record. She led me to her and she used my ring as a bargaining item so she could trick me into letting her go. I think she turned into the snake that bit Tristan."  
Klaus sneers, "Should I expect that you didn't want to speak up because the lass did you a grandiose favor?"  
He's unhappy with Marcel's choices tonight, and he has yet to be subtle about it.  
I question, "What did she look like? Did she have magic?"  
"She was definitely a witch, just not the kind you find around here," is all Marcel can say.  
"Did you see the weapon?" We hear Lucien ask the young witch Alexis, calling attention away from the topic at hand.  
I hear Alexis rhyme, "She doesn't like to be called that. Though, if you attempt it she can bring about more misfortune than a black cat."  
Klaus looks over at me specifically for clarification if she only speaks in patterns. Lucien repeats himself and she tries hard to give him a smile.  
"...This is much more than an armament... In order to understand, it must be seen," she replies.  
We all turn to face them. Lucien looks at me willingly. I walk forward as she offers me her hand. I'm slightly afraid of what I might see. I slow down the sinking of my fangs into her skin to ease her into it, unlike Klaus, who would stab his incisors into her flesh with animal instincts. She's showing me things—all too difficult to pull into focus except for those that I have to.  
There's blood everywhere...our belongings are destroyed. A woman with long red hair, her gun pointed directly at me. Finn appears; he's in an inconceivable type of pain. My heart skips a beat for every movement that goes against a pitch black scene, the thousands of golden eyes surrounding their leader's red orbs. My brother Kol's perished corpse. A symbol I recognize but can't quite put my finger on.  
Alexis is choking on something warm and rust-smelling. That is when she gives me the image I know best. The still bayou, still trying to wash away my past sins. A hand shoots out of the unbroken surface and latches onto the land. She stares straight at me with her heterochromatic eyes, but imaginatively moving past her, they are looking onward as Niklaus is torn to shreds by a mob of blurry faces.  
I come up for air, spitting out the blood I've drank.  
"She's—poisoned," I gag.  
Alexis promptly draws her last breath in the arms of Lucien. He panics, his heart breaking because he once felt a short and vague sentiment for the girl. Klaus and Marcel are waiting to see what I'll do next after I've regurgitated everything I've taken from her system. I don't want to tell them anything because then, I would have to tell them everything. For, you don't tell the children that there is a snake deep in the summer of your home—you take care of it yourself and you don't say a word.


	2. Just Me and You

KLAUS

The smell of lavender has never been an enticing smell when laced with blood. She makes herself obvious to us in that way, thinking herself a siren of vicious sailors. Every time I look upon the purple flora, my mind latches onto a charientism that targets my weakness and Aurora recognizes that.

Elijah kneels beside a freshly dead woman in our courtyard this morning, holding the poem left with the vulgar gift.

"I remember her to be a better poet," I sigh.

Elijah shakes his head. "I don't think this is lacking in poetry... We have two menacing women on our hands."

There is no shortage of malignant belles here, and I suppose our family is simply the blood honey that attracts the timeless uprooted maniacs once in a while. I could neglect to picture Aurora De Martel as the malevolent force that works on the same plane as a venomous witch, but this city is known to bring out the worst in others. It's how we intended it; and for us to be the judge of friend and foe illusions.

Our mystery witch could wait. I had to see Aurora for myself.

I touch Elijah lightly on the shoulder. "She wants to be found. Shall we?"

"Are you so incredibly eager? You haven't said her name in a millennium and neither have we, at your command," recalls Elijah.

I stop in my tracks, reckoning, "I won't wait so that she can place her calling cards all over my home, Elijah."

"If you're going... Listen to me first. The vision Alexis bestowed upon me...Aurora was in one of them, but she wasn't the only thrill of the past that bubbled to surface," he quickly summarizes.

He cannot to shy me away from the topic. Not after what she did to me and will attempt to do to me again.

"If you wish to tell me something that could possibly divide us then _te absolvo_, brother. We find her, we'll kill her together," I resolve.

I can see it in his face that he's not satisfied with that, but I simply can't heed to it.

AURORA

I'll be patient. I won't place too much hope into this reunion, although I am quietly confident that I can make this right. That you'll love me again, my dear Niklaus. A sweet agenda I've looked forward to since the break of morning.

Just this morning, I confirmed the florist girl was delivered with a clear and lovely message to him. Perhaps, I could've compelled her away, but where's the stage drama in that?  
I secured the floral shop to myself—it will be a quiet place for us to spend time alone. I consider all supernatural personae to be the exact same: offer them blood or sacrifice (or both) and you are in their good graces. I've never failed to predict these things, I swear I could be just as great of a wizard as the one Lucien is lusting after right now. Poor thing; though, I can't say it doesn't breed me approval at least one witch dies a day around here. They're the real nationalists, praying for their own private America in which all vampires suddenly drop dead. Maybe the flower wench was a witch; maybe I had performed a service to the community.

I thought I'd remembered to turn the "open" sign over to relay a contrary message. I suppose some can't take a hint. A dainty clacking noise appears behind me, a small tap to end the concert of noise suggesting someone is in front of the counter.

I'm admiring the custom orders on the shelves, asserting to the customer, "We're closed."

Although they do not speak a word after mine, I can feel eyes on the back of my neck. It makes the curly red tresses on the back of my neck stand on end as I recognize the moment is finally here.  
"Nik," I softly smile.  
I turn to face him. The name does not fit the personage.  
On my far left, a girl in a vintage black babydoll dress appears to be browsing the fresh boquets.  
"I'm sorry, did you not see the sign? We're _closed_," I buttress my warning.  
She turns her head slightly to me, her round multitone eyes ogling at me while her gentle fingers graze the fissured petal of a mauve callalily.  
"Oh, I'm not buying, I just came to pick something up? It's addressed to Tristan De Martel." puzzled, she reads the tag on the oriental fabric box.  
A delivery of flowers? To my brother?  
"What for? What's going on?" I frown.  
She shows me her empty, ringed palms. "I'm just the messenger."  
As I stroll away to get the bouquet, I keep an eye on her reflection in the glass over the framed portrait above the front counter.  
"You know, in Japan, they call them _higanbana. _Flowers that draw lost souls to their next reincarnation," I state.  
Her voice scrapes gravel, "I hear they only tell people those things to keep them from losing hope. After all, living in a monastery on the side of a dormant volcano? Kind of disheartening, no?"  
My heart skips a beat. I whip around, grabbing her throat and pinning her on her back to the cashier counter, leaning over her.  
"Who the hell are you?" I demand.  
"Your guardian angel," the woman jokes.  
The hand I don't use to squeeze her lovely neck pushes one long baby hair out of her green eye. "Such pretty eyes, I'm sure I'd have remembered them."  
The girl's facade of a graveyard statue follows the remote wandering of her eyes, away from my face.  
"You can tear them out if you like. They tend to grow back."  
I interrogate, "I'll keep that in mind. What do you want with my brother?"  
"You ever think maybe he's the one who picked the fight?" she mumbles.  
"That wasn't my question."  
"I don't see why you're protecting him. He's only brought you pain."  
"What do you know?"  
"I do my research. The De Martels are high on the list of the first vampire families. In any mainstream gamble, I'd bet high that you're one of the strongest. The ones times like this will have to do without. I don't want to kill you. Just pick up a few stolen goods and...watch you reap the consequences."  
"Consequences?" I chortle. "I take it your a witch with those kind of vague threats."  
"Not the kind you're used to."  
The girl brushes past my right shoulder, picking up the fresh, softly hued crimson lilies, examining them carefully between her fleshy talons. She plucks out a useless leaf amidst the floral heap and maneuvers toward the back of the shop.  
"Meaning?" I scoff.

The pliers punctuate my words with one loud _shnk._ The flowers drop like dead birds from the sky back onto the table, the bottom of their stems still in her white grip. She turns to me, face like a tranquilized beast who hasn't closed their eyes.

She decrees, "I'm the reason they still exist; that you're ten times my age."  
She takes my hands and wraps them around the spider lilies she holds while she maneuvers around the back room as if she had been here before.  
"And if you hurt me, if you can't do what I ask, Aurora... I can change that in a heartbeat. For everyone just like you."

She reaches behind me, her lioness breath brushing my shoulder as she tears a thick black ribbon from the stand just behind the supply chests. She finishes tying the ribbon around the arrangement.

"_Mira_. I may not be in the business of teaching others a lesson, but I have a good gauge of what girls like you will do for some attention. Even if it kills you. So, while we're talking in demands... This needs to be the last time you see Klaus. It's better for both of you—"

The bell on the shop door rings like a little bird.  
Both of our heads snap around like two twigs under foot. Niklaus looks us both in the eye, his wariness of me transferring into a sort of terror when he sees her.  
"Jezebel..." he swallows.  
She looks back at him, almost brighter in the eyes than before. Is this it? They know each other; is this where she steals my spotlight.  
"You knew about this. You wanted to ruin it," I growled at her.  
She rolls her eyes, licking her lips as she turns her head back to me.  
"Remember what we talked about. _Le acompaño en el sentimiento._ I have places to be."  
Klaus reaches out to her, but he's a step behind.  
The power in the room fleets for the moment, just enough time for her to disappear without the slightest trace of her presence prior.

VINCENT GRIFFITH

The gravel below my shoe soles crackles with every step. I look around the concaving row of crypts, struggling to stand tall on hilly terrain.

"Serve Her well, Seraphim, saved not by Heaven but by the sweet sound of jazz," I taunt her out of hiding.

An insect with long flappy wings brushes past my ear, making an itch in my heel rotate me around to see Jezebel, standing directly on the moon's lit path. The shiny white butterfly crawls across her left cheek and disappears into her black cloak of hair.

"So, you're still alive. Not aging well, apparently," she greets, pacing around to the front of me.

I greet her, "By aging poorly, you mean aging in general, right? I don't have to stall my youth like everyone else to get things done. Speaking of, I expected more of an entrance."

"Well, that's the whole point. People talk, don't they?" gradually, she responds. "Last time, I disturbed the peace, it was a literal hurricane."

Jezebel walks past me and into the threshold of the Black Clay Graveyard, the moonlight seeping down her back the further into the deadly garden she goes.

She claims, "This place just gets worse and worse. You'd think tourism would have spread enough wealth for some obvious renovations."  
"Well, when a girl known to cause monsoons has a habit of coming back to tie up loose ends, we like to keep things temporary," I mocked her.  
Unamused, she stops beside the grave sculpture of a child being overlooked by a marble angel, turning her head slightly.  
"Is that supposed to be—"  
I interpose, "A joke? It's a warning. Jez, you're as good as they come, but you have a century-long streak of bad luck trailing behind you. You know Tristan De Martel is dying?"

Her eyes glow a pale white in the light of the moon like a blind cat. I watch her disappear behind the corner of the Gibson musician crypt, the clack of her pointed boots going down the candlelit walkway.  
"Oh, of course, you do. You think getting him out of the way makes stopping the Murder of Seraphi any easier?" my voice echoes.

She intimidatingly appears in the grave doorway inches from my side.

"Tristan had no right to try and exploit me for his own gain. Regardless, that means he knows what my enemies would do to get their hands on me. He's going to make a deal with them. I had to do something," she purrs. "But, at least, now I know who has my body. It's him. It has to be him."

I mumble a charm beneath my breath that mystically awakens the undead candles of the junk candelabras of the Laveau grave.

I exclaim, "You're speculating, Jez! You always do this when you've got no plan. Now, I heard you the day I found your vinyl all those years ago. My ancestor, Celeste, she's on the prowl god knows where. And if we want to stop her for good, we gotta have numbers. So let me help you! Just heal Tristan, leave the sirelines alone. Look, I— I came lookin' for you tonight because the coven is afraid. They know you're here, you're still guilty under several pretenses that they haven't forgotten. The least you could do is make a statement of surrender to our laws. Maybe we can help you."

Her cat-like lashes doubtfully flutter an inch to closing, her head's horse tail of thick hair slipping over her bronze-plated collarbone.  
"Let's not pretend your coven's done me any good."  
"And you don't deserve their crap. You're a good kid, Jez, this I know. But you reinforced their fear of you when you fell off the deep end all those years ago. Tsunamis in Japan, earthquakes in California, mass hysteria in Italy, cult suicides in Switzerland- You aren't bending to natural law, and for some witches, that's a big deal."  
Her spiteful tone slowly deteriorates to a regretful mutter.  
"I did those things for the right reason," she narrowly pleads.  
"See, but I wasn't there!" I assert. "So how do I know that?"  
She falls silent again, more susceptible to my disappointment than anyone else's.  
"Jez. C'mon. Just surrender. The Murder will win when it's only you putting up the fight against them," I lecture. "Ask for help."

Jezebel asserts, her voice scraping a pile of bones, "I can save myself. I do that, and your precious coven has enough room to make it another millennium or so. I survived my family long before I met you. So don't pretend we're anything closer."  
Her nimble hands slip away from the frame of the Henderson mausoleum, and she disappears into thin air just as the sun is coming up.  
AYA

He's broken a sweat so noticeable it appears as though he's been for a swim. They have his hands in theirs, Tristan's grip nearly bone-breaking. The snake venom coursing through his veins causes extensive pain in his major arteries and in his cranium.

"Her name—is Jezebel Zhukov," Tristan swallows, bloodshot eyes glowering up at me. "She is what the witches call a Seraph...one of the oldest species of supernatural beings on the planet. She lacks a human form, and she's relying on spiritual energy to keep her afloat in this world. She can't do us much more harm than this without a human body, which...holds most of her power—"

He winces from another stroke of intense quivering.

I evade voicing my doubts, still questioning, "You still haven't told us _why_. Why does she have to be a part of this."  
"She's leverage. A priceless tool which...can speak of the end or a new beginning for vampires, werewolves...witches...! Her Holy Roller comes to collect in a month. If we don't have her, they'll—they'll kill us all. Everything we've built will be destroyed."

He tries to sit up, but I have the other members present lay him back on his loveseat. He is in no position to strain himself to be a leader at the moment.

"We hold the most recruits of high status witches than any coven around the world. We'll keep her at bay, surely," I take a chance on a promise.  
He pants heavily as though a new explanation will outdo his health.  
"Aya...that girl is vital. She is more than a witch," he swallows, bloodshot eyes glowering up at me, "She's one of the things that has created them."  
The unsightly terror in his ending syllable sends a ripple of discomfort down my spine. I even see some of our surrounding company becoming unsure of their position.

"Tristan," someone new breathes in our space.

A spastic head of fragile red curls comes speed-walking in, at her brother's side in an instant.

"Aurora. Aurora, what have you—"

"I escaped. I had to come, you know that," Miss De Martel pleas. "That wretched girl. What did she do to you!"

Tristan shushes his frantic sister with a gentle squeeze atop her knuckles.

Tristan commands, "You mustn't trifle with her, sister. Stay out of her way, unless you've already come to meddle with our sires. She's here for them. If you are not careful..."

This won't do. I don't know Aurora personally, but I know her reputation: a lunatic beyond one's sympathy. However, today is not the day I plan on upsetting her by sending her back or demanding she lock herself in a sanctuary somewhere on these streets. A display of truth, in which I am anxious of her, would make Aurora liable to do something far too precarious. Then, we are a step closer to defeat.

"You can trust me! I've already moved Rebekah. She's safe. If I can get to her brothers, they shall be—"

Tristan barks, sweat flying, "What?"

This can go on for some time.

"I suppose we'll begin with a standard sweep," I sigh.

I snap my fingers at the two newest men to join the Strix, Mario and Refta.  
"When you see her, don't hesitate. Take Arianne with you."  
They equip themselves with stakes, Refta leaving to find one of our witches. I see him second guess his large strut and pause at the front entry.  
He bends down, a sample of the sunny day reflecting off something in his hands and into our eyes.

"This was outside," Refta tells me as he turns back to us.

He's holding a bouquet of ripe white lilies, a card attached to its bundle. I look from the ailing Tristan to Refta, shooing him away. I am handed the bouquet's card, where the sender's initials are mockingly signed off with a devil's horns and tail.

_"Ella no es peligrosa por saber lo que quiere, lo es por saber lo que vale."_

**KLAUS**

Watching her stand on the curbside with the rest of the on-looking tourists, my fingers twitched on the handle of the car door from pins and needles in my anxious veins.  
Her pensive expression gleams brighter than the burnt out streetlight bulbs in the SUV side mirror. Not one to acknowledge the trend in the jovial nature of city nightlife, she stays in one place with eyes on the horizon of tourists heads and the parallel side of the street, dissociating for all to see.

Elijah shuts the passenger door, though, I have yet to tear my eyes away from the passenger-side mirror. His puzzled silence tells me he has seen the same ghost.  
"What did she say to you?" he wonders.  
I lazily set me head against the passenger's headrest. "If she'd told me anything, I wouldn't be constantly quoting Aurora on what's be said, or for that matter, threatened."  
"This came to Marcel from the Strix gala photographer this morning," Elijah sighed.  
He put it on the dashboard for me, but I needn't look.  
"Jezebel Zhukov was the uninvited guest at that party. Marcel confirmed she is the witch Tristan had in custody," continues my brother.  
"Why aren't we going out there and setting the record straight?" spitefully, I questioned. "You saw her die, Elijah!"  
"I was told she was dead, Niklaus, I didn't see the body which is the liable reason she is standing out there, people watching."  
My eyes collapse onto the photograph Elijah had brought to the dashboard. In the crowds of ballgowns and tuxedos, with red sharpie Marcel circled the reflection of the youngest person in the picture, eyes on me in the captured reflection of the localized decorations.  
Elijah stresses. "What do we do, brother? Why is she here?"  
"I'd rather focus my efforts on the sireline war at hand," I lie to myself aloud. "There will be consequences for her, Elijah, but in good time. Even if it means...I must do what I couldn't bring myself to long ago," I admit at last.  
The live mirage of Jezebel in my side mirror startles me. Once capturing my glance, she does well not to break it until the very last second when she is absorbed by the crowd.


	3. Revivescere

ELIJAH MIKAELSON

_October 9th, 1820_

I can't even begin to think what he saw in her. Perhaps, the overwhelming stench of fear and the lovely tinge of helplessness in her broken English was enough to spin him out of control. Niklaus could never resist a damsel in distress.  
Jezebel Zhukov, come to find out, was actually the polar opposite of a woman in danger. She was a firestarter herself, with no regard for any collateral damage outside her own personage. No, this couldn't be told all from the first glance. It's just what we came to know and expect in the end. The tale began quite dire and bitter.  
After a late night at the playhouse, I and my two above-ground siblings took the back streets towards the abattoir we'd newly moved into. Rebekah on both our arms, we took to the playful deconstruction of every moment of inferior acting that both King Claudius and Horatio had clinged to for that particular production. Niklaus had seen it more times than the rest of us; for, he and Kol used to be avid fanatics of Shakespearean poetry and storylines.  
"No, no, no. You can't improvise such lines! That's why Ectadiné's productions fail to surprise," rued Niklaus.  
"_'_One can have the smile of a villain'—it's almost correct and means the exact same thing. Might I suggest finding a new deadcrush other than an aboriginal man who kills off every screenchild he creates?" Rebekah laughed in reply.  
Of course, he'd never let anyone tarnish a single sentence of his favorite play. "'One can smile, and smile, and be a villain', Rebekah! It is entirely too important to juxtapose!"  
"For God's sake, it's not even one of the main lines!" I remarked after my third time hearing this rant.  
"Right, right," Rebekah rolls her eyes, elbowing me gently in the rib as she continues to mock him. "His 'words fly up, his thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts _never to heaven go'_!"

We exchange gracious smiles in the grand event of each other's company. We hardly had nights such as those anymore. What with the constant bickering in the house and are almost never-ending travels to keep father guessing—it seemed as though we were without each other in our own home, in our own _city_.  
When Rebekah realizes she's lost Klaus's arm, her head swims around like she's lost her glass slipper.  
He was standing but ten feet behind, watching war-faced beauty of a ship float beside the eastern dock in our harbor. _El Grito_, the side of the mid-sized ship read. The trimmings spoke of a mesoamerican origin and the flags fearlessly wagging blank flags high in the air; they demanded more attention than necessary.  
"Well, well," Klaus visibly has an idea by the flash of his arms crossing. "As it seems, we won't have to deal with the governor's heinous excuse for an afterparty feast in the end."  
"Niklaus, we still agreed to make an appearance," I sighed. "Perhaps, save it for the walk home. We need not bloody our Sunday best."  
Of course, nothing rings louder in Niklaus's ears other than the little devil sitting on his shoulder—or, our sister's delicate voice.  
"Oh, come on. When was the last time we had a family dinner, just the three of us?" Rebekah chuckled, walking Niklaus's exact footsteps.  
Weekend nights tend to be my freedom from their nuisance personalities, but—what's the saying? If you can't beat them, join them.  
Overenthusiastic and still rocking through his third glass of whiskey, my brother politely helped our sister aboard, and playfully, near knocked me over the lip of the deck. With an air of irritated beginnings, I posted a stiff index finger in front of his face to warn him of the chances he was taking.  
The ship had fallen silent. That's how we knew it wasn't ever supposed to be here.  
Before Klaus could lift the hatch down to the crew's quarters, a young latin gentleman flipped it open and quickly walked up on us to block our lingering curiosity.  
"Sorry, my crew is try to sleep. You can' be here," he tries to stop us.  
Klaus snickers, hands folded behind his back as he leans into the boy's face, "Really, well, we were just in the neighborhood. Hoping to have you and your crew join us...for a little dinner."  
"I want a burly one," Rebekah decided. "Particularly, the most handsome."  
"Patience, sister. The pickier we are, the less likely we're to enjoy ourselves," I huffed, stepping forward. "Now, young man. It will be particularly easy on you to...just send a few of the crew members up here who will not be particularly missed. And...do pick a handsome one, at my sister's behest."  
Rebekah's grin glows, incredibly pleasured by the look of confusion and fear on the boy's face. She claimed to get an adrenaline from it each time; I'm sure it was true of all of us. Yet, it's like I said once before when Klaus was (unsurprisingly) not heeding to my lectures . It's the parsimonious individuals the vampires need to be wary of.  
With loud, self-speaking footsteps, Klaus and I descend down into the dark of the cabins and wake a hoard of livestock and sleeping women, children, and their men.  
"Wakey, wakey! I can't believe you were all planning to leave without saying goodbye! How incredibly rude, now, you at least owe us some explanation. Or some entertainment. Get a move on. Everyone out!" Klaus gleefully raised his voice.  
Like ducklings, he handpicked the ones who shook, who didn't understand a word of his, or who were ready to fight back. Most were women, of course; he claimed to be a connoisseur of blood type and females always seemed to have the best. Less of a chance of the blood having a tobacco tinge, I suppose.  
"Since I'm feeling generous, sister, you can have first pick," offered he.  
Moaned Rebekah, "Mm...What about the rest of them?"  
"Well, they can watch and help me burn down the vessel when they're done... Or they can trade places with the leftovers should they present a valid case."  
Rebekah circled them all, touching one teenager's ribbon-braided hair, cruelly knocking a beautifully embroidered hat off a quivering man's head, or tickling the back of a veiled widow's neck. It became evident where I was wrong to engage in their form of fun at this point; these people had all ripped up their roots and moved on in the span of a night. This was just a dot on their map of a long road ahead. The vicious deity of empathy came rolling in; I wanted to stop. Increidbly, not a word from me had to be spoken after all.  
Rebekah finally picked the most pathetic woman, a woman who sobbed a colloquial Spanish prayer, and teased her prey with the initial graze of her fangs on the woman's neck.  
The click of a loaded weapon made her stand straight and let go of the woman. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the gorgeous shine of an outdated firearm in tiny hands.  
Klaus slowly turned around, a challenging smirk on his face. Looked as if we'd missed one.

The girl was no older than eighteen, face dirty and incredibly mean-spirited. Nonetheless, she was stunning in the most sublime way. Her complexion had the tinge of raw amber honey, freckled by little brown dots; she was a zealot of sunlight and it showed even under the pale moon. The syrupy hair on her head reminded me of a sable's coat. She wore a heavy trenchcoat with compliments of red that matched the embroidery of marigolds on the dress she wore without a bustle or train underneath.  
"You sure you know what you're doing with that?" I scoffed.  
She didn't say a thing.  
Klaus turned to her in full, hand on the tip of the gun and planning t push it away.  
"No, please, don't hurt her. You can't—"  
"Stay out of this," the girl quietly demanded.  
"Smart girl, you should stay out of this!" smartly, says Klaus, turning his torso to point at the boy we'd met first.  
Those who had been onlookers relied on the girl's distraction in order to scurry back to the boat and hide.  
Continued Klaus, "Clearly, she has a desire to die or...at least, hog my attention—"  
He touched the ends of her heavy tresses; I knew that'd be something that would get to him. Something about the virginous patience of uncut hair was one of his biggest weaknesses.  
"Three bullets," she began to warn him, "Two are white oak. Take your chances wisely. If you don't get one, your friends will."  
The very threat made Klaus slowly withdraw his hand from the gun and stifle his hunger for a moment longer.  
"What did you say?" Rebekah frowned.  
She then aimed the gun at Rebekah.  
"Alright, alright," Klaus leveled his tone to a much calmer volume.  
For defense, he rose his hands.  
He requested, "Let's not be too hasty. Just tell us. Where did you get the white oak from?"  
"We won't hurt you if you just set the gun down," I promised.  
Of course, she was in no position to believe us after we'd tried to make a meal of her friends.  
Speaking of, with our backs turned, the young captain had retreated to his ship whilst we dealt with the young woman thriving on a lack of sleep and possible head cold. Quickly, he withdrew the rickety old boarding plank while looking the poor girl in the eyes. I could see him mouth an apology. She was going to be stranded here with us.  
While distracted, Klaus makes a grab for the weapon with little success. She fires it in the air.  
"Go away. Go now," she howls. "Before I aim right."  
When her glance met mine, I was overwhelmed by a sharp hue pale jade in her left eye that didn't correlate to the faded brown in her right eye.  
I grabbed Klaus's shoulder, drawing him back. Of course, Rebekah was still less than charmed. Without a window for reaction, the girl is defeated by the pain and quick draw of blood from Rebekah's fangs.  
Rebekah spat it out instantaneously. The girl fell to the ground, dropping the weapon.  
"Gah!" Rebekah groaned.  
Klaus grasped the gun, emptying it quickly as if he believed the girl would wake. I rush to Rebekah, who covered her mouth as she doubled over.  
"Vervain... It has to be vervain," she croaks. "It burns..."  
"Let's go. Leave her. She can die from the cold," Klaus panted. "We need to burn these. Now."

JEZEBEL

_October 11th_

Two days late. One hour from seven in the morning, I'd be two days behind. I don't know how I figured that I could travel 500 miles in under three days, but I had to make it work. I couldn't be in New Orleans longer than a day. There had to be obstacles on the way, and I thought I'd calculated them all. I'd have to walk a good hundred miles once we'd docked in South Carolina. Then, another hundred would be provided horseback, whether I had to steal one or get a loan. With the war in Mexico happening, the Guerrera family was making illegal exports and imports—even taking some immigrants to and from. I would have been in Yucatán by tomorrow morning had I _at least_ been wise enough to factor in the shit I would get from other people. Vampires included.  
I didn't know why my father was gone or why I couldn't go with him. He didn't address the letter he left me before this mess had started, but I knew it was from him. He was left handed like me, and it showed in his messy, slanted cursive.  
In a way, it felt like I wasn't going to like the man I was travelling to. I felt sad, angry... Maybe we'd had a fight. Again. Tatli wasn't taking care of himself lately, but I forgot why. I forgot where my brothers were, or if they were waiting, too.  
Before I go down a list, I guess it'd be fair to say I couldn't remember a lot of things. I just knew I wasn't fifteen anymore, and that I woke up six days ago with a need to flee.

A pair of ranchers found me near the trade ship ports that morning and offered me a bed for the night outside the city. I was visibly sick, and their youngest son was studying to be a doctor. If he could practice on me, surely, he'd do better in university.  
The woman adjusted the set of blankets she'd laid out on the floor of her bedroom, every now and then looking at me to see if I was still conscious.

"Where were you headed?" she asked.  
"Mexico. My father's waiting for me there," I responded.  
She nodded as if she didn't understand my choice. "Well, you're far too lovely to be traveling alone. Perhaps, I can convince my eldest to escort you across the border, into the Republic of Texas. He's...used to moving people."  
Her eyes strayed to a small cabinet on the far side of the room. There were several random items, such as a toy rabbit, a man's coat, a pair of badly vandalized Bibles, and even a cracked statue of the Virgin. They must have not belonged to them.  
"We always assume someone will come back for them, but...I know they won't," she lamented. "Times are far different than before my boys."  
I shook my head softly, putting an extroverted hair from my braid behind my ear.  
"So long as he has some sort of cartography I can use, I can get there myself. I don't want to be a burde—"  
My tight hand across my mouth and a throat blocked by vomit stopped me from finishing.  
She grabbed my arm, almost to support me as I hastily rose from the bedside.  
"There. There!" she warns me, pointing directly across the tiny farmhouse hallway.  
My knees crashed into the side of the tub as I regurgitated a barely-there heap of my last meal. I must have had a concussion of some kind. I was awake enough to know the girl who'd bitten me wasn't kind enough to cushion my fall last night.  
"I'm sorry," I panted into my arm as my female savior cradled my shoulders from behind.  
"...Listen to me. If you're in any kind of trouble..."  
"I'm not," I lied. "I just want... I need to get there fast."  
"...Stay here. I know someone who may be able to help you. Her name is Celeste. She's a—"  
Celeste. Of the jumbled memories in my head, that was one thing I remembered clear as day. I wasn't letting that bitch get her hands on me now.  
"No!" I cried, grabbing her arm. "No, please! Don't tell anyone! I... I have to do this myself. I can do it!"  
"_Ssh_, I believe you, dear. But I'm afraid she's already on her way. Perhaps, you'll change your mind once you speak with her—"  
"No, no, I have to go!"  
Puzzled, Mrs. Miller exclaimed, "What? Stay!"

Her husband questioned what I was doing as I walked past, his son in the doorway with hands full of pillows.  
I made it as far as the front door, spurred in the moment of picking a direction and sticking to it and hoping it somehow led to Texas.  
Unfortunately, I was hindered by what was waiting on the Miller family's porch. One of the vampires from the night before.  
"There you are!" the green-eyed vampire grinned his wolfish teeth at me. "I've been meaning to have a chat with you."

KLAUS

She stood against the wall for the first fifteen minutes I'd been in the house. I waited for her to come forward, blabbering excuses or explaining herself for threatening me with a white oak gun.  
I had plenty of questions, I knew. Such as "Were you bluffing?" What do you know about white oak? Who told you? How many times? Where did you find it? How did you know to keep it with you?

The girl wouldn't say a thing to me. She must have been slightly shocked, having heard I wouldn't be allowed in without the homeowner's final say. Fact of the matter was that this land belonged to the state and its republic, which made it a neutral ground.  
Mr. and Mrs. Miller were piled on top of one another like empty dinner plates in front of the fire mantle. Their eldest son's wrist was in my mouth, slowly turning blue much to the disappointment of my hearty appetite.  
"You don't have to kill them," the girl belatedly said. "They didn't hurt you, I did."  
Too little to late. I hadn't seen Mr. Miller's fingers twitch in quite some time.  
As I dropped his wife from her limp seating on my knee, I watched her roll to the ground as I jovially lifted my arms in bloody sleeving  
I replied, "Nonsense, darling! It's lunchtime. Now, you seem more reasonable than last night. I am glad we have a second chance to have a small discussion about that white oak."  
I patted the couch beside me, but she doesn't move.  
"Oh, come now," I sighed, "I don't bite as hard as my sister. Very clever, by the way. Fueling yourself with vervain on a long journey. You never know what sort of pirates you'll be dealing with, hopping port to port like that."  
"What are you talking about?"  
"Well, surely you meant some sort of defense against the greater powers on your journey."  
Admitted the lass, "It wasn't real white oak. I was bluffing. You scared me...you scared those poor people."  
I approached her, delaying the pull of Elijah's stolen handkerchief from my pocket. I wiped my mouth, looking her in the eyes.  
"All in good fun. Do you really think that was worse than what they could be encountering at sea? Starvation, influenza, robbery, drunkards, tight spaces, et cetera?"  
"They are looking for their homes," she frowns.  
"And what of you? Surely, nothing was so urgent as to lose your watery steed for the sake of calling my bluff."  
"I didn't know that would happen!" she raised her voice at me. "I'm just as tired as them. No one on that ship had anything left to give you. They left it all behind. As for me, I wasn't going to wait for you to kill us all. I have a family and friends and they need me. I need them! And no fucking entitled man, not even you, is going to get in my way!"  
I looked down at her feet. I might not have seen it at first, though she did plan to leave without shoes, but the blisters and signs of hardship were creeping up the soles of her feet. There were even amateur amends to stitch up a slice in her foot where a sharp object may have struck.  
"I admire that vigor," I complimented. "You know, I myself find a lot of my time dedicated to family. And when their lives are threatened at the hand of a juvenile, no matter how trivial or impressive it may be, I have to ensure she doesn't try it again. Who told you about the white oak?"  
She tilted her stubborn grimace down at her filthy feet, refusing to answer. I rose from the sunken in armchair, approaching her in big strides. She reached around the corner of the wall into the foyer and latched onto a much smaller seat, placing it between us.  
I exhaled calmly, deciding to reach my ringed hand past her head and let it rest there. I lean over the chair until I can see the dark mutant freckle thats its on the border between her amber iris and pupil.  
I proposed, "Do not forget, I have the ability to make your stay fairly difficult for you."  
"_Adelante. _I don't break easily."  
"A rather doubtful thing to say when you're running from something," I accused her. "You see, the first thing I notice when I look at you, Sweetheart, is your eyes. They're riddled with anger, frustration, dare I say—issues of your own making. Regardless of who or what you are, or how innocent you may be...you'll only become a villain the longer you act like a victim. So. If you say a word about white oak to anyone, or intend to come in contact with any in the next few days, certainly you can understand I'll have to gouge those lovely eyes out?"  
I took my hand away from the wall by her head, watching hers roll off to the side distantly, empty of anything she could say that would change my mind.  
I began to leave the scene I'd made until I stopped my step parallel to the overexhausted lass still backed to the wall.  
Those tortured feet caught my gaze again. I still remembered the feeling of mine when we first fled Mikael, cleaning them of blood in even filthier rivers and straits. Scars never formed, I healed quickly. The iron tickle of knives in my heels never went away.  
I hesitated to mention, "...You can still make it. A storm comes tonight; no later than ten, and you'll have to occupy yourself until it passes. You won't get far with the roads turned to mud."  
Her throat waved in a delayed swallow, head straightening to make her seem less anxious as she dismissed me with her silence.

REBEKAH

_October 12th_

Rustling in the middle of the night. The offkey drumming beat of footsteps above my head went back and forth like a militia's parade. I sat straight up in my bed, my beloved Emil stirring beside me and beckoning me with a somber arm to stay under his arm.  
Holding the sheet to my chest, I exhaled roughly and brought my robe down off my head board.  
"I'm parched," I muttered, kissing Emil softly on the mouth and departing the bedroom.  
I tied my robe around my waist and sauntered down the hall towards the door of the garret. It was probably Nik. He was the family insomniac and a master of night terrors. Sometimes, he would go through his things, relive his old memories, and smash everything to pieces. That's how we lost a lot of fine china and chandeliers, of course.  
The space was directly above my chambers. My room was once Nik's, but he complained about the smell it casted from leaks, summer mold, and the dead bodies _he _would hoard up there for days. We became bored of it; now, he had the master.  
A body hunched over a dusty teal chest wriggled like larvae in the imprinted shadow of moonlight coming down from the high lone window we still didn't know how to close.  
"Nik," I scolded sleepily.  
My brother was caught off guard, turning to me with wide eyes and a face drained of color. Yet, I found I had the wrong brother.  
"Kol," I gasped. "What are you doing? We haven't seen you in months!"  
Not nearly as felicitous in seeing me, he proceeded to struggle and swim through centuries of our riches. Out behind him came old sketchbooks, clothes, jewels, horse reigns, unopened liquor, and other casual possessions.  
"Stay out of this, Rebekah, go back to bed," he whispered frantically.  
I crossed my arms softly, stepping towards him.  
"Instead, you might give me an explanation before I call Nik and Elijah."  
He wouldn't stop. He wouldn't listen. Coming up on one of his diaries, he lit up like a firefly there in darkness, flipping through it and moving his lips without sound.  
I raised my voice, "Now, Kol!"  
He shushed me, getting to his feet.  
"What part of 'stay out of this' do you misunderstand? Can't you just trust that I'm not here to cause damage?"  
"Your history of a hunger for attention speaks to say otherwise."  
"Rebekah, a life is at stake. A life that needs my help, and if I let her down— I might lose everything. Can you understand that?"  
"Kol, I'm your sister. Whatever is happening, I can help!"  
"I know. And I know you would try..."  
I take his shaking hand in mine.  
"Sometimes, we are not the best of friends, not the best of siblings. But we love you, Kol. I do," softly, I console him.  
His eyes full of shame and fear underneath the thick locks of hair fallen from his neatly pulled back style.  
"You want to help?" murmured he.  
I squeezed his hand with a loving smile on my face, believing I might be able to make him stay. I am sorely disappointed.  
"Well. You never saw me."

I let go of him, shoving his hand back at his side.  
"But—"  
He was visibly irritated by my constant talking or just sorry he'd been caught. He grabbed my arm, threateningly squeezing with ten times the force I'd used on his much bigger palm.  
"Kol...you're hurting me," I protested.  
Then, he ruined our reunion with a charmingly facetious grin and lets go of my arm, defensively putting up his hands.  
Quietly, he simpers, "Don't worry. This is just a dream, is it not? if it's all the same to you, I'll be on my way. Love you."

JEZEBEL

I decided it was better to leave before the Millers woke. I left a note regarding one of their horses I planned to ride to Texas, explaining I'd forward it back to them once I made it home.  
The winds were picking up, sweeping around leaves and dirt like small tornadoes all over the ground my distracted stallion insisted on trotting through as we went.  
I felt the ribbon holding my braid together slowly slip away, relinquishing my untameable locks to the dampening whirlwinds and atmospheric sounds of thunder.  
My stomach began to turn. I wasn't sure if it was hunger or if I was still sick like this morning. Choosing to stop and let myself off the motion-sickness trap that was riding bareback, I let the horse graze on the side of the road as I wandered down the road, breathing in and out, and took some of the cold air into my lungs. Hunkering over, I started to wonder if the weight in my stomach was enough to make me plunge two fingers down my throat. I had never felt like this before. Something was different.  
Raising my head to check for any oncoming carriages or wild animals, I noticed a very thin white object peaking out from the silky field of wild grasses beside the horse. It was a lawn cross, one with little pink roses painted on it to mark the grave of a little girl.  
I'd seen it before. Twice, actually. Twice that day. In fact, I must have rode by wild grass that morning a number of times.  
I wasn't sick. I was under the influence of magic. Someone or something was trying to keep me in.  
Realizing I'd been going in loops for the last few hours, one last inhale shot up into my throat and gagged me.  
Still, I prayed I was just hallucinating or not getting enough air.  
Mounting my horse again, I rudely pulled its head away from its snack and kicked it as hard as I could into a running start.  
Five minutes passed. I hadn't gotten a sense of deja vu after seeing that field; not until I saw the road turn into a sharp curve of cypress trees and lead me directly back to the Miller farmhouse.  
The horse habitually slid into a stop right in front of the paved path leading to the rickety emerald front steps.  
Dismounting, I lightheadedly danced on two bare feet. My left wanted me to go back in the house and possibly meet my oppressor. My right wanted me to stand out in the open where a witness could find me.  
Something landed on the back hem of my hand-me-down prairie dress, forcing the neckline to shoot up towards my collarbones as two strong hands grabbed me from behind and pulled me away from the house.  
A dark-haired man, different from the one before, panted in my face with a furious sense of urgency.  
"I knew it. You're stuck in here, too!" he declared.  
"You. You know who's doing this?" I questioned.  
"What are you talking about?"  
"The vertigo spell I—can't reverse it if I don't know who's doing this!"  
"...You don't know who I am, do you?"  
"Should I!"  
"...Dammit. Dammit!" "It doesn't matter. Hold still!"

He clutched my forearm, his hand so much bigger than my own that his thumb and and ring finger could meet atop its tender anterior. My eyes fazed into a starry static that passes over into a zoetrope of images.  
It was a brooding wooden door, with hinges custom shaped to resemble griffins. There were vines, flowers, and fruits carved into its surface, almost like a design on fine china. My lungs stopped taking air, punished by the warm and blunt inhale of dust I couldn't cough out. I was panicking in a muffled way, and then I felt the sweaty touch of cotton on my mouth. And then I realized the sighs and drownings of pain were coming from the other side of the door.  
A ripped white shirt on a faceless body emerged from behind the door, the stranger's hand holding something gold and swinging swiftly. It was my pendant; the one-of-a-kind symbol of my pack. I wore it everyday.  
I tried to pull away, thinking I had all I needed to know. This boy was responsible. In one way or another, he was the reason I was here.  
The brown-eyed, hog-browed vampire still managed to shove a wrist full of blood into my mouth and nearly choke me with its disgusting flavor of rotten fruit and rusty copper.  
Clamping my mouth shut with brute strength, I had no choice but to swallow before I turned blue.

Letting me go, I fell to my knees in the mud and tried to force two fingers down my throat. His wet strands of chestnut hair began to seep out of their ribbon binding as he hunkered down and pinned my arms on either side—just like the vision.  
"I'm sorry. You know that," he muttered.  
Pulling a dagger out of the belt around his burgundy waistcoat, he raised it to the grey, stormy sky and planned to strike.  
"_Revertum_," I cried out.  
A rivet of heat released from my skin and visibly infected his armed fist. His hand suddenly thrusted, not into me or my person, but into his own heart. Mouth agape and pretty eyes near out of his sockets in shock, his hold on me loosened. He drizzled into a grey state of living and lifelessness. He fell face flat into the mud, right next to my over-exhausted and unconscious self.

**CELESTE**

_October 12th_

Death was a fine look on the girl's face, though, it had not come nor knocked even once. The death was in her fantasies, pouring out through her eyes and her restrained, limp ligaments. Her eyes would not meet ours; I'm not sure they could manage to make us out beneath the layers of jiggling tears on top of her ceiling-directed irises.  
Pressing a wet rag, fresh out of the pot on the room's fireplace, to her forehead, I pulled away the dark miniscule curls from her ears.  
"You did the right thing. He was going to hurt you both," I murmured, running my hand down her shoulders with enough pressure to warn her of her error. "But next time, I trust you'll move on with as little contact as possible. Like you should have."  
She mutely spoke, "What do you want from me?"  
Blinking away bulging snow globe tears, she rolled her head back towards me. Alexis and Parayah entered the room, cleaning her legs off and sterilizing their own hands in the scalding pot of water.  
"If you tell me, maybe I'll stop running," Jezebel swallowed, keeping a close eye on the two.  
I pet her hair, slowly cupping it down on my lap.  
"That depends. I can be a real god send to you, Jezebel, or I can make things harder than they have to be," I told her. "Bring her the pale there."  
Parayah brought it forth, setting it beside Jezebel's headroom. The girl's eyes followed Parayah all the way out the small bedroom door, the swing in its heavy wood panels taking the time to slowly close. With all the footsteps echoing throughout the house, Jezebel got to thinking. "Where- Where are the Millers?"  
"They're away for the mean time. We needed ample space to ensure you're in an environment where you can live safely for the next few months until Carmila arrives," I softly explained.  
The question sounded more like a question of how we got through the protective barrier she placed on the house before we arrived. I sensed it the second we walked through. Likewise, she had to know those spells can be broken if the Millers were more than just "away."  
"My mother? She's coming?" With a childlike gleam of curiosity, she wondered.  
"She's already here," I smiled, placing a gentile hand on her belly. "In a home of her own."  
My hand was slapped away, and her head ripped from the restrictive band my other palm created over her head. Standing before me, she covered the bare stomach which was in the beginnings of protrusion.  
"What the fuck are you saying?" She raised her voice.  
Three of my Seraphs came back in, filing around the back of her and I next to the bed.  
"How do you know my mother! Answer me!" Jezebel demanded.  
"I'm a Seraph witch, like you and your mother. I lead her former Murder of Seraphi and therefore, I'm responsible for restoring order after you so violently killed her. We needed her to survive, to keep nature balanced. It's been decided that you're going to change that for us. You will bare her new life. And when Nature comes calling for a balance after her rebirth, you are of equal power and blood—strong enough to replace her in the afterlife."  
She shook her head. "I won't let you guilt me into pretending this is alright. You're violating me! You're making me die for something I don't believe in!"  
"But you did kill her. You see, not only did you tear her open when you were born...you stole her magic. You, yourself, were not ever supposed to exist," bitterly, Alexis howled.  
I rose a hand to her, begging her to hold her frustrations back.  
Jezebel turned on her heel to face the young witch who'd spoke, staring at her directly. I see Alexis and Vida's brows furrow, the back of Jezebel's curly head freeze.  
"What are you doing?" Panicked Alexis.  
I pull on Jezebel's shoulder, making her nude body face me instead. She was holding her breath. There is no spell for this, no way to make her stop other than physical violence.  
"Breathe," I hissed.  
Her eyes reddened and blinked from dryness, her mouth and nose cut off from releasing her carbon dioxide.  
"Breathe!" I screamed at her.  
Jezebel's eyes began to roll up, and Paraya jumped at the chance  
"_Aripostatum immaculand o' vor denos__!__"_She cried, hand on the back of Jezebel's head.  
Jezebel promptly fell forward with sleep, right into my arms. I didn't so much as bend to catch her, letting her tenderly lay between my forearms.  
"No raw foods, remember. And certainly, no long distances. Good night Jezebel," I spoke softly, watching them take her back to bed. "Commence her examination. Quickly."

**REBEKAH**

_October 13th_

That morning, I awoke to an uneasy thought. 255,501 days. That included how many nights I went to bed believing in "Always and Forever." The fact of the matter is, we all had put so much faith into our bond that we never thought about how weak its joints were becoming... As weak as when we developed the vow—just children chasing each other with muddy hands in a Viking village in the North. It was good enough at first. We only needed each other and had no desire to invite others in to share our pain. Some of us changed.

By this point I was almost eight hundred years old. I'd done almost everything, seen everything, heard everything I had ever hoped to; this did not include any of my brothers' support of my aspiring visions of having my own house, my own husband, and my own children, mayhaps. I could do better than the Mikaelson family name had done for me, I thought.

In my mind, Elijah had the last say in what I could and couldn't do. He never told me along this always-and-forever ride that I couldn't fall in love or that I couldn't go and be on my own. He never would, or else he himself would be a hypocrite.

It was only months before this October that Elijah had met a witch he lovingly knew as Celeste, and he had been over the moon ever since. She was one of the few who "worked" under the governor and his son, my beloved Emil, and had earned her privileges as a citizen of New Orleans. She was beautiful, educated, virtuous, and soft-spoken. She was exactly as I had pictured a woman made for Elijah to be.

Of course, Klaus thought nothing of her but a nightly treat for Elijah. From the very start, I knew there was one thing about Celeste that would never sit right with Klaus: she was the lead in almost every witch-related happening around the city. Her coven was a pain in all of our asses, but there was not much to do about it when it was her hand Elijah had decided to ask for.

I'd known about it for a week. Though, Nik was totally absorbed in his own melodramatics, I saw the ring in Celeste's finger she so desperately hid at first in the crook of Elijah's arm in the street. They whispered, schemed, couldn't leave the door open—it became more and more obvious. It was only a matter of time until "always and forever" was tested like this.

"That isn't fair,"  
"Fair to who? To you? How can you not trust me? Once you become a part of this family, I assure you I can change the—"  
"Not to me! To them! Elijah, you dote too much. The longer you let them rely on you, the less independent they become. I love that you want us to take care of your siblings, but you must know that...eventually it will end. How do you know they don't want to go their own way, too?"  
Sounded like a load to me.  
Albeit, she was right. Togetherness, as in twenty-four-seven togetherness, was a strain on our familial love. It made Niklaus violent and out of sorts when it became too much or too little, and the longer I put my dreams on hold, the less time I had to make it happen.  
I stood with my back to the wall by Elijah's door, my embroidery in my hands as I listened.  
"It also...isn't fair to me. I don't have nearly as many freedoms here, Elijah, and you know that. I'm willing to abandon my coven, how can you not do the same for me with your family? You still have a chance to ease them into the idea of our marriage."  
"Mexico, Celeste? How can that be any more salutary for us?"  
"We've been going over this for weeks. A month! It's because I have something planned," "and I want you to be there when it happens. When our world changes. I want to keep you at my side."  
"Tread carefully, mate. I've heard that one before," I heard the chime of Niklaus.  
The eerie sound of enthusiasm on his voice made me hiccup in surprise, and I swear I could see all three of our hearts leaping from our chests to the floor.  
I peered my head in to see that the connective door from Elijah's room to the kitchen's back staircase was impacted by the shape of Nik, leaning on the wall crowning.  
"Niklaus, how long have you been standing there,"  
"Long enough," "So. What's this I hear about Mexico. Hm?"  
"Don't tell me you're eloping,"  
_Say something_, I pleaded in my mind when a profound silence slapped against my ears. I couldn't see Niklaus or his expression, but I knew by the soft exhale of someone in the room that it wasn't any good.  
"We were thinking of having an official ceremony before we go. Here, with all of us,"  
"I see.  
"Nothing is decided without speaking with you and Bekah priorly, Klaus. Perhaps, we should invite her to join this conversation,"  
Klaus advanced a step toward Celeste, who stood her ground as best she could in the face of an untrustworthy toad.  
"Oh, she's not going to miss much. I have to hand it to you, Celeste, whatever spell you have my brother under is really doing the trick. He's speaking nonsense,"  
"Is that what you think?" "It can't possibly be that we've fallen in love?"  
"Well, given you held off this long on such a strange secret, how can it last you? Face it. You've done him a round of favors, and by the time you're even at the altar—"  
"Niklaus, that's quite enough,"  
"You know, maybe we should bring Rebekah in here. See if she's with Emil. I can demonstrate in him what this family can do to leeches. I mean, witches,"  
"That's perfectly fine. Push her away, too, like you will me if you cannot accept my decision making. I fear I've truly lost all hope you'll ever understand the needs of others, Niklaus, even your own siblings."  
"What is that supposed to mean?"  
"I had to wait a month before I could include you in this! Do you have any idea how that kills me? To know my brother is capable of ruining my engagement let alone my right to independence?"  
"Fine. Can you tell me why she wants to take you across the country and into a whole other continent? Has she told you?"  
"...Have you ever considered New Orleans isn't the best place on earth to have a family? To have opportunities? It's because of who makes the rules. That is always and forever what it boils down to. If your prejudice against witches is what has kept her from feeling safe here, maybe we have no choice."  
"Well. Congratulations to you both," "Just know. If you walk out that door, you'll have to walk on eggshells around my city. Because it will be trained to bite at your heels from then on, brother."  
"Don't let it be like this,"  
"You've made your choice. You've chosen Mexico," "Consider my gift to you, a bride full of my blood."  
"What—"  
In a glance, he's behind Celeste, gnawing on her neck like a damned animal on a sheep carcass. She falls to the floor with a slight yelp, Elijah rushing to her side.  
"You know where I stash the blood samples. Help yourselves,"

**JEZEBEL**

I wasn't just crippled by the news. I was beyond reach. I was almost completely sure I hadn't sexually come in contact with anyone for any of my seventeen years of life. Well, at least not a man.  
To think it was some kind of immaculate conception that Celeste had planned for was the most probable explanation for it. How else would I be carrying the reincarnation of my own mother?  
The thought made me groggy, eyes closed and stomach pinched in after a cold burst of nightly wind hit my face.  
My head dipped, synchronized with the church tower struck twelve and cried out in the form of a ringing bass sound. The current on the river was strongest on nights like this when the moon was as full as it could get.  
I thought about jumping, but the whole plan I'd made since I'd arrived was to stay alive as long as I could—be it for the next six months or six days.  
I just loved the sound of running water, hitting sharp rocks and little tides rolling off each others' backs.  
My loose strands blew up towards the rooftops on the other side of the colossal river body, so I tilted my head up towards the moon to keep them from blowing into my mouth.  
One big exhale, one cleared mind. I imagined the river parting for me until I could see all the pebbles, mud, and lost souls on its floors. I imagined it curling towards each other like the spirals on a striped housecat's coat.  
Then, I stepped with my right foot. It touched water, but the solid formation underneath it was as thick as air-blown glass. I walked with caution, eyes still closed until I felt my ankles start to sink little by little into the deeper running part of the channel.  
My lashes fluttering to sprawl wide open, I saw the water had not parted, but solidified to give me the floor I had wanted.  
The last time I did this, I fell right through because I couldn't keep concentration. I never had the room to practice, and I guess that was one of the benefits of being on my own. No restraints on what I could and couldn't do.  
I thought about Tatli's letter, and the boy and then, about the little white cross on the field in the labrinth spell.  
If I hadn't known I was pregnant before I made it to Mexico, and I had no idea of the consequences, I wondered what my father would have said. He wasn't particularly cruel or condescending or controlling, but he loved the word "honor." Even if the boy was right and that letter was a fraud, I knew I would have disappointed him. I _was _disappointing him.  
The drop in my focus almost knocked away the invisible walkway from my feet on the water's surface.  
To say the letter was forfeit was a harsh theory I never thought of. We had enemies, and I knew that. I simply couldn't remember who or what they were. This applied to most other things, like whether or not I knew the boy I'd killed well enough to tell him what was happening to me and who Celeste was. I must have.  
I woke up in an empty house but two weeks ago and I'd been running ever since. I had no logic behind it, I just knew I had to go. Perhaps, I once trusted him enough to tell him where I'd go; that would also mean I killed my only friend in this...  
I was so damn guilty of everything even if it wasn't my fault or any sort of malice. I even felt responsible for that girl buried in the field with little pink roses on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  
The nightly walk eventually wasn't working to uplift me anymore. I turned around and brought myself back onto the sloping offroad riverfront, picking my shoes back up and lacing them back onto my soaked feet as tight as their laces could draw.

When I sat up again and faced the shadowy indication of oncoming people, I was surprised to see but one I recognized. Klaus, a bottle in hand and shoulders arched inward slumped along the isolated riverside road, his sullen explain illuminated on one side of his face.  
He did a double take and nearly knocked himself backwards when he saw me sitting there, looking back at him.

"What are you doing out here?" I asked him  
In an intrigued slur, he repeated back to me, "What are you doing out here all by your lonesome?"  
I stood up to get a better look at him and instead caught a whiff of moonshine coming off his clothing. It was a dismally familiar smell and disheartening.  
"You're drunk," I sighed tediously.  
"A necessity for having a decent night on the town. Call me impulsive," he charismatically replied. "What's say you join me?"  
I pressed a reluctant hand against his imposing chest, which imposingly leaned on my arm.  
"I don't think it will do me any better than it has you."  
"Oh, come down from your suspicions. You don't appetize me. Let me prove it—"  
"You shouldn't be out here. Let me walk you home," I interrupted harshly.  
He took his arm away from me as soon as I had begun to turn him back towards the rows of portside French Quarter homes and businesses.  
Growling in opposition, "I can navigate my own way home. I suggest you take your own advice before you bother me any further."  
He was a neurotic drunk. It was ironic; I won't talk about it too much. But it put me in a panic. Regardless of how he and I started off, I knew what made even the undead and supernatural turn into a helpless mess. Heartache. Or denial. Sometimes, it was both. It ruined almost everything for me. I didn't wish that anyone else.  
"Please, don't go alone," I blurted, grabbing his wrist again. "If you don't want to go there, then we'll go somewhere else."  
Klaus wasn't moving, either high on his own wariness of me or plotting to run away at top speed. I pulled on his wrist.  
"You know, I've spent a fair amount of my time divulging in my family's needs. Yet, they never can dance to the beat of any of my own expectations and values. Of course, the halfsibling always gets the shreds of decency."  
He didn't really think that; I didn't share in his thoughts, but he wasn't technically of sound mind.  
I opened my mouth to stop him, but watching him put the cobalt bottle to his lips again he spoke faster than I could form words after he'd swallowed.  
"Elijah's been the captain of our ship since the dawn of time, and by far, his decisions become no better than ours. We glorify him as the resp-"  
My hands quickly wrap around his head as I drive his tortured mind into a hibernation caused by my touch. My hands pulsate with heat as he suddenly falls onto me and trusts me with all his weight in my forearms.


	4. Dangerous Liaison

KLAUS

On Saturdays, the Apothecaire Fair the witches insist on putting at the center of the Tréme is less of an attraction to the locals. They just came to stare, some with desperate anger and others with pity. There isn't a shortage of eyes that linger on Jezebel. All she has to do is sit there in front of a cold Irish coffee. One would have it that I'm not envious of such incredible amounts of attention, but I admit, I'm turning green.  
I've had witches spit at my feet, call me foul names to my devilishly grinning face, and of course, attempt to kill me upon first sight. But for her, they all keep a respectful distance and do not speak or breathe so much as a slanderous hiss in her direction.  
She is just like a fragile sculpture from hellish Pompeii, new to the exhibit. she somehow survived the years without a crack on her surface through the harshest elements, yet, your hands will still blacken with soot pain if you touch her.  
Animals are an exception. One blue-haired tourist passes with a big black canine, muzzled in purple fuzz fabric; it begins to defy the general flow of the excited street and bark at the back of Jezebel's head. Then, it gets more vicious, nearly knocking its owner back as it stands on its hind legs to try and get free. Jezebel turns her head, not a wrinkle on her forehead or general look of malice. The dog halts barking and suddenly breaks free. Head down anxiously, it approaches her with rolling shoulders and big pupils.  
"Dawn!" The tourist calls to him angrily.  
Jezebel snaps her fingers in front of the dog. It sits, panting happily as though it has found peace on the other side of the café fence between them.  
"I'm so sorry, he's been acting so weird today!" the tourist apologizes to Jezebel.  
She reaches through the iron welding and puts a soothing hand on its head, it frantically begins to sniff and lick.  
"He's very sweet, I bet he makes a good companion," Jezebel comments, scratching the obviously disturbed animal behind the ear.  
Reverting to pup-like habits, it leans into her gentle touch.  
"He is... How did you do that, by the way?" The tourist laughs awkwardly.  
"Just a dog person," distantly, she smiles.  
The tourist quickly puts a cage-like structure around the animal's mouth while he's distracted, using a high-frequency voice while he's distracted by his new human friend. The animal is pulled off on a leather-laced leash, its owner rejoining her friends.  
Calmly, Jezebel reaching into her coat for something small and glittered.  
At a normal volume, my sensitive hearing stretches across the crowded street to catch her kind message to Elijah and I.  
"The dog has stitches on his right leg," she brings out an unsurprising Sobranies cigarette, "That's probably why she puts that thing around his mouth. Pain makes animals bite, but..."  
She releases the smoke withheld in her mouth.  
"Sometimes, they are taught patterns. Like Pavlov's dogs. To salivate for a bell—_pero_, in this case, the dog saw me lick my teeth which is just a common predatorial move. So, he challenged me. Only there's a pressure point in front of the ear that triggers a rush of dopamine to the brain. It was easy to change his mind. I guess I'm suggesting before you come over here, you figure I know your pressure points better than I know a domestic housedog's."  
Elijah and I recover each other's goal-oriented gazes with habitual ease.  
"Now, that sounds like an invitation," he simpers slightly.  
Jezebel taps the cancer stick over the edge of the heavy napkin underneath her drink. We've already put ourselves across from her by the time she returns our glances.  
Elijah tries a polite approach. "Jezebel. What a pleasure to see you."  
She slackens back against the chair.  
"Then, don't look so upset." She talks over the noise of the outdoor fan above us.  
"We apologize for the belated greeting, but now's better than never, no? What are you doing here?" immediately, I interrogate.  
More importantly, how could she be alive? Of course, I was warned of boundaries before I walked out my front door today.  
Jezebel thrusts her perpetual ponytail off her shoulder.  
"Resenting how many people think sitting alone is an invite for conversation. Why, what are you doing?" she casually remarks.  
Elijah rejects her offering of emerald-tipped cigarettes for the both of us.  
"Regardless of why she's here, Niklaus, I think we should simply address the big rule in our city before she commits another overnight fiasco."  
"Is that what we're calling it now? Oh, you're full of it," she squints her eyes doubtfully at him.  
Elijah continues, "It's been told you are accountable for causing a ruckus at the Strix party on Halloween, the poisoning of Tristan De Martel and possibly Lucien Castle's Seer, and conspiring with the Regent of New Orleans. Do you decline the charges?"  
Jezebel responds softly, "I decline conspiracy. I had a conversation with a close friend in private. _But _Alexis... She's not a Seer. She was a Seraph. You would experience a lot more concern if she had lived."  
The name alone brings a skeptical simper to my face. "A guardian angel. How fanciful."  
"A Seraph is a natural-born immortal, a species of witch. I am one, Alexis was one, and if you remember Celeste, she was the one leading us off the edge of a cliff."  
My head swiveled to my brother beside me. The pensive finger he leaned against his lip shot back down into his fist and made his Rolex rattle like a snake.  
"How coincidental any bodycount with you always entails one of your own kind. I do believe we've seen that elsewhere, haven't we, Niklaus?"  
His reference to Mikael spurs her into an angry sneer across her freckled nose.

Polite enough not to blow it straight into our faces, the wisps of grey smoke seeping from the corners of her lips turn into a big cloud that retreats from the exterior world through her nostrils, connected by a golden septum. When it dissipates her head shifts in my direction.  
"Let's get to the point. I'm not going to bend mountains for Tristan's recovery if that is what this is about. I didn't come for retaliation regardless of what those women did to me. I didn't save Marcel from making a huge mistake just because I thought I owed your family one. I came because he stole from me and I'm not leaving until I get it back."  
"And what exactly is it you desire from a bargain weasel such as Tristan?" I inquire.  
She puts out her fiery stub in the bundled and damp napkin.  
"Nothing you can afford," she mocks.  
I trap her chilly hand on the metal welding of the tabletop to restrain her departure a little longer.

"As much of a blessing Tristan's quick demise would be to us, he holds a set of very important items at the moment. He's the only one who will tell us where they are," I state.  
Her pupils dilate like a coyote in headlights the longer they train on mine. "Mikaelsons travel in threes. Where's Rebekah?"  
I merrily exhale at her understanding.  
To Elijah, I say, "I always had a penchant for negotiating with witches. They prevail in the strangest ways."  
He nods down at the table, adjusting himself in his seat. He's bored with this exchange already.

"I pity you, but not that much. I'm not going to save Tristan if I can't make my point," Jezebel claims.  
"I understand there's been talk the Strix is looking to get you back under their veiny wing. As there is something of theirs you're looking to retrieve—however gruesome. I understand you came by..._vessel_, back to this city. If we ransacked your hideaway, which I'm certain the witches can help us find, and found this magical vinyl of yours, we could use it for our own purposes to get back our sister. I hope I've accurately persuaded you. Otherwise, I'd quite like to see what others would give for a thrift exchange of a genie in a bottle for Rebekah," I threaten.  
She is certain, "You wouldn't do that."  
"On the contrary. We're not sparing feelings here, are we?" I counter.  
"Of course, not."  
"Then what's the hesitation?"  
In saying so, I cause an intense silence between us that somehow leads to a very simply surrender. Jezebel rips the sapphire poison locket off her neck resentfully and sets it down on the iron surface next to Elijah's hand. I pick it up boastfully, ensuring it has contents inside. Then, Elijah stops me.  
His head turned towards me, peripherally, he shows Jezebel his suspicion.  
"What do we owe you by taking this? How do we know this is real?" He questions her.  
Jezebel stands to adjust the hot red colors of her meager clothing.  
"I actually believe Rebekah is worthy of my consideration. Whatever's going on, she doesn't deserve it," Jezebel addresses her decision sourly. "If you don't think it's real, what can I tell you other than you give me too much credit for being a scam?"  
She walks past us, swinging around to the other side of the fencing between us, now equipped with red sunglasses to match the plastic aesthetic of her skirt.  
"_Buen' muerte_, _cabrones_. Kiss the rabbit's foot you don't see me again."  
Slapping her fingers of stacked rings on the fencing near my head like a cellmate, she continues down the road without even a second regard for the people who control the confetti-stained road she treads on.

ELIJAH

Time deprives us of the sweet and quick memory of real love, keeping it at the bottom of the toy chest as new and less important brushes with passion come and go. That is why I apprehend the same blunder once learned with Aurora. Though, conceivably, what I did to Jezebel was entirely worse than a cruel compulsion.  
This family has an unfortunate toll on the bodies it tries to embrace. There is a known few who have survived our traditions and our vows, but those same few always seem to come back to us, still in love or overtaken by bitter frost.  
Aurora drifts in the purgatory of our good graces. Niklaus was looking at a reflection of his flaws in Aurora, Aurora who was so alone she would love anyone who showed genuine interest in her. That is what I was convinced of when I compelled her to break his heart: they were simply in love with the idea of being loved. He's only been at the whim of Aurora's fantasies in order to get to Rebekah's stolen corpse. I have to believe that; I have to know that there is no going back.  
Perhaps, that's the only kind thing the early Autumn pollen by the name of Jezebel ever did for me.  
It was hard to say if he ever loved her. She was a clever but miserable girl who washed up on the shore and decided to invade our world. Yet, she was everything he lacked. She wanted to protect him, to make him laugh, to teach him, to prove he was cared for, _to be somebody _he could not forget. But it was never for the sake of Klaus's love; she made mistake after mistake and she didn't know how to fix it other than fixing someone else.  
Much like where our stage is set on this Thanksgiving day, between two brothers and three misfits at a table tainted by the mutual hands that dripped with the blood of each other's sireline.

"It's all been to protect you, respectively. Lucien and I have always been enemies, but if we had arrived together as allies with news of a bleak future, you would have doubted us. It was maintaining appearances," Tristan excuses his band of allies around the Thanksgiving table. "We came to protect you and ourselves. We have never wavered on this point."  
Klaus lackadaisically answers, "And the bodies on my streets? Also your protection?"  
"Now that's just business. Old tactics for success," Lucien says, "is a frightened human populace. It is much easier to control. If tourism should decline and the local vampires are deprived of fresh blood, well, you saw how quickly Marcel joined hands with us."  
My brother mockingly laughs at them all. "Pedestrian. I would have expected something more from such glamorized theatrics."  
Lucien leans toward him. "Well, you're not going to let us take all the blame are you? There's a killer snake charmer on the loose with a heavy record for disaster."  
"I have been endlessly imagining the reasons, so pray tell, what did Tristan have to do to be next on her list?" I question. "Speaking of whom, did she not get the invitation?"  
"You've offered the girl a seat at the table of five vampires with underlying tendencies to discriminate against witch-kind, two of said vampires she has had a romantic history with. And, we're eating dead animals on one of two holidays she despises. In other words, you told her a joke," Lucien comments.  
Niklaus appears to see the reasoning in that.

Aurora is visibly irritated with this amount of discussion of another girl in front of Niklaus. She was threatened by the girl, after all. Learning that Niklaus jumped on the allure of Jezebel's sharp Latin tongue and prance of the "lost lamb" apparently put Aurora farther from reasonable conclusion that it was, in fact, over.  
She downplays her envy well.  
Aurora says to Tristan, "Brother, you had something you desperately wanted to share with our hosts?"  
"Yes. This is a good bridge into what I'd like to discuss next, actually. Seeing as Jezebel is a part of your prophecy—"  
"If that is true, it's the first I'm hearing of it," Niklaus directly intrudes.  
I straighten my back as he brings me into the conversation, properly setting his utensils down. Niklaus waits for one of us to explain. I don't want to talk about it, but he'll demand it of me sooner of later. Fearing the idea of bringing that girl back into our lives, I let it be known what Alexis the Seer showed me.  
"Alexis bared some reference to Jezebel's tie to the prophecy through her visions on the night she died," I confess, trying to put the case to rest before it's open. "However, given she wants nothing to do with Niklaus or myself, we should all return the favor and leave the girl be. A war can't be started until we provoke the other party."  
And I meant it. If it was easy for her to guarantee the silence of Alexis, we could take a page from her book and cut out our weeping crocodile.  
"If you positively considered that, you would not have sent her an invitation behind my back," Klaus defensively notes.  
Lucien continues, "But you should be thankful he did. The invitation is what kept her away. For, she would not like the proposition we're about to make. The vessel she was transported on has become vacant, or at least we plan on making it so. When the time comes, we'd like you to lay claim on her artifact."  
My head shoots up when Lucien halts his proposition at the distant sound of clacking heels in the distance and slam of a door.  
Jezebel sharply turns the corner into the courtyard, looking directly at Tristan. I catch the matching eyes in the room, looking up at her like a renaissance painting.  
Lucien sighs, "Speak of the devil."  
Lucien's hand turns white upon picking up Jezebel's limp hand. She merely watches him try not to be overcome with pain as the numbingly hot sensation in his hand resides a little longer.  
"I'm not here for the fake occasion. My vessel is gone," Jezebel hisses.  
"And?" I playfully remark.  
She takes out her keychain calmly, flicking open the brightly-sheathed swiss knife it holds. She stabs it just below her heart, and I receive the pain. As she carves upward, her face stiff as a wooden board, I watch my blood stain my freshly pressed dress shirt. The feeling of severed arteries heightens.  
As she pulls it out of her chest, she hasn't shed a drop of blood. However, the neckline of her blouse is now beyond repair.  
I hustle to catch my breath and to retain my composure.  
"And I'm upset. Can you tell?" Jezebel promises.  
Klaus irritably groans, setting his utensil down loudly. "Tristan, let the girl have her toys and leave her out of the equation. This is between you and your sires."  
Jezebel switches her shark-like posterior in his direction.  
"You have made it clear you were disturbed by my presence here and that you would take it if you had to. Tristan is not the only impending source of bone dust in this room," Jezebel barks.  
"Well, if you were going to try to kill my brother, why not return the gesture?" Aurora smiles wickedly. "Come on, Tristan let me have her."  
"Nobody's killing anyone," the Mikaelson sister, Freya, says as she steps out of one of the back rooms. "It's in safe keeping."

FREYA

Jezebel's chest moves a little with a suppressed sarcastic sound effect.  
"Jezebel Zhukov. I've heard a lot about you," I greet her.  
With an air of superiority, I come toward her.  
"Nothing bad, I hope" she acrimoniously retorts.  
"The child of the first werewolf alpha and a malignant sorceress, oh, there's gonna be talk," I remark.  
"I'll introduce you sometime. Speaking of, glad to see Dahlia finally ate shit. I don't know if you remember me. We kind of got into it a couple decades ago."  
"Couldn't forget. I'd never seen a monsoon that strong before. You're powerful. But not more so than an original witch."  
Jezebel smiles at me coldly.  
"I'd bet money otherwise, but my trust fund doesn't come in paper format."  
Taunting me, she sniffs and wrinkles her nose softly.  
Elijah looks between us witches while he waits for his queue of violence.  
Aurora comments, "Dinner and a show. For an American Holiday, Thanksgiving has proved its worth."  
Jezebel cuts to the point of her entry, "You've done your research, but you haven't checked your safety net. The thing you stole from me could get your family killed. Where is it?"  
"In mint condition, obviously. I happen to know Tristan was waiting for it to be here tonight; he ransacked the DuBois Farmhouse looking for it. You're stubborn, you wouldn't hide it in plain sight, so I did it for you. More for my own cause. Give us the coordinates, and you get the vessel you're looking for," I address Lucien and Tristan.  
Jezebel doesn't react; she just makes it more complicated. "You're asking the wrong people."  
She escalates the point of the entire evening. A paper flicks upward between her nimble fingers for Tristan to see.  
With a dead gaze, she says, "You shouldn't wear a blazer in eighty degrees. If you take it off, you can get pickpocketed at any given tourist hotspot."  
Panicking, Aurora stands.  
"You naughty girl," Tristan says without surprise.  
I try and take it from Jezebel when she isn't looking. She senses my hand before it even moves, holding it to her opposite side.  
"You're too late to make threats. She's scheduled to be dropped in the Atlantic tonight!" Aurora blurts.  
My heart skips a beat. Jezebel smiles mischievously as everyone suddenly turns to Aurora. Elijah's face is turning a pale pink and Klaus's neck pulsates with stalled swallows.  
"The ocean!" Klaus growls, his chair jetting out behind him.  
Aurora is taken aback, like she didn't realize what she just told us was wrong.  
She frowns, "Nik! She's perfectly fine. I'm keeping her safe! No reason my sire shouldn't be trusted in my hands."  
I am not waiting any longer. I prepare to say a spell that brings her thoughts forward, muttering a simply incantation under my breath. I raise my electrically charged hand to Aurora, but Tristan is one step ahead of me. He thinks fast, acts quick for his sister's sake. He grabs me, holding me against him with a knife to my throat.  
"Harm my sister and I'll reciprocate," Tristan sneers in my ear.  
I don't fear. I see the way Jezebel looks at Tristan, her hands reaching around her head. She breaks her own neck. Like clockwork, the twisting of four vertebrae mimics the ambience of bottle caps popping after a war is over.  
Jezebel stands tall, cracking her neck back into place, but her nose still bleeds from the dire exertion. Elijah extends his clean handkerchief to Jezebel, whose nose also bleeds a brilliant red. She doesn't take it.  
"I'll make yours bleed the old-fashioned way if you don't take me to what belongs to me," she asserts.


	5. The Ex Complex

JEZEBEL

Jezebel stands on two lean legs before me, loosely holding a stick of white sage.

Swatting it away, I cough at its bothersome smell and blink away the smoke following the path of sunset's glow coming into my eyes through the window.

"I've had just about enough of you," I groan.

"You and the rest of the city," responded she, dispassionately. "Unfortunately, there's not much I can do until you tell me your coordinate. Otherwise, I don't get my vessel back."

"You would think it'd be easier if you'd left me unconscious."

"You would. Por supues'...that's why you're a vampire and not a witch. You're all speculation."

"You're not here because you're worried about your vinyl. You're here because you're worried about the Mikaelsons. Nik, to be more specific," I twitch with irritation. "Is that speculation?"

"I told you if you had just stayed out of my way, there'd be no cause for you to care what I do," she repeats.

"He told me everything," I tell her. "How eloquent of an actress you are, using a 'pregnant girl on the lamb' story to butter everyone up, make you likable, and then, make it impossible for them to convict you of murder. Now, I've got to tell you, I've thought about going there but I've never had the guts—"

"I know what happened, I was actually there," Jezebel spits.

"What's the matter? Too soon?" I chuckle.

She steps forward, thoughtfully looking at the wall behind me and lightly sniffing to alleviate an itch. "It's funny. He told you about me, but I never heard a word about you. Let's not assume we know anything about each other."

"On the contrary. I know enough to make you suffer," I promise, "such as the reason Tristan even wanted you here. You're alike to a plague of locusts, Jezebel. You and your Murder of Seraphi. Though you run from them like a coward, you somehow manage to never look back as they tear this city in half like the red sea. I'm perfectly suited to tell Klaus what it is you're up to."

She leans down toward me. "You think you know him better than I do?"

I simper confidently.

"I'd say an entire millennium is adequate enough to earn the right."

Tricky, she wonders, "And what day did you two meet?"

"Oh, nice try. I'm not that naïve!" I catch onto her snooping.

Jezebel nods lightly.

"I'm aware of that. So, do you think if I went and asked Klaus, your timelines would match?"

I say nothing to that. The eldest Mikaelson sister appears, looking at an epiphanied Jezebel expectantly.

"Well?" Freya yawns.

Jezebel's teeth rake over her lip.

"The date the De Martels transitioned. Those are the coordinates. Tell Elijah we can let them go," she figures. "Let her go. We have what we need."

Damn.

"Jezebel!" I call out anxiously. "He already called them. And rest assured, if you free my sire, I will tell them everything!"

she turns on a high heel, tattooed hand on the doorframe as she leans back to look at me.

"Give it a try," says she. "Luckily, you're a reliable source."

ELIJAH

I'm standing on the overhead railings of the Abattoir when Jezebel emerges from the room where Aurora has been detained. There's a pause in her step when she notices the large "M" imprinted on a pillar nearby. Given her past exhibition of unpredictability, her thoughts take her somewhere else when the right cord is struck. That crest is a catalyst for colorful ideas.

Tristan must finally be out of relevant information. Klaus removes himself from Tristan's spot of detainment and approaches Jezebel, unhappy to see him without a bargaining piece.

"No such luck?" he intones as his hands lace behind his back.

She extends to him a paper with a number written across it.

"Aurora transitioned on November tenth," Jezebel says. "So, I'm guessing Tristan's coordinate is something along the same lines."

I can't see my brother's façade, but I guess it to be geared toward something of appreciation for little chaotic antics such as this. I also imagine the way he used to lay his eyes on her, with a slight longing and disguised pity.

"Not as clever as I expected from her, but all the same, poetic," Klaus remarked. "For the record, I didn't tell Freya to—"

"Nothing permanent has happened yet. I won't browbeat you for it," Jezebel interrupts.

"You aided Marcellus and you managed to keep my sister from an Atlantic prison. You've given us an advantage. I deem your next step will be to remind me that I owe you."

She says, "You don't have anything that I want."

His attention is still fixed on her as I round the corner of the railings just to see his disappointed gaze. I have to stop meddling.

I start walking back into the room where Tristan sits unconscious and bound to one of our fine Victorian chairs. My original thoughts were to interrogate him about the cargo ship where Rebekah's body lies, but I have come up with a new round of questioning in the last five minutes.

Tristan wakes with the scent of burning sage that crunches in Freya's grasp. His eyes open and his breath quickens; he looks horrified. He tries to speak, but he's only wriggling in his seat and humming.

"It's a side effect of her magic. It must have triggered the venom still in his system," Freya notifies me.

We choose to let him have his episode. Within a minute or so, he passively sits with a traumatized expression.

"I do enjoy knowing a most merciless witch is out to get you," I smile.

KLAUS

It had to be brought up sometime, when we would stop being familiar strangers and start being a failed romance.

Stepping towards her, I purr, "If there's nothing I have that you desire, then why are you lingering here in my city?"

She folds her arms as though she prepared to hear the question a second or tenth time. I lean over one of her shoulders when she refuses to respond to my interrogating stroll around her perimeter.

"I know for fact you swore you'd never come back to this place if it were an option. So, what other reason do you have to stay—besides me?" I tempt her to play.

Jezebel closes her blue-vein eyelids and puts her incarnadine lips together, unimpressed. She stops my imposing closeness with a firm forearm to my chest. Her forearm rebounds back to her side after a soft push on my dress shirt.

Jezebel states, "I can practically taste the paranoia. Trying to romance and gamble the hard feelings away in every potential threat you come across is a cheap trick."

She's one to talk. There would be no hard feelings had there been less secrecy between us. She was scared of my kin once and it drove her dire need and success to betray us.

Unable to restrain myself, I inhale deeply Jezebel's scent of sandalwood, my hand intimidatingly grazing the side of her olive neck to move her satin hair back. My memory serves me well that she would reject any sort of human contact with me as she takes a step away.

"If a fifth of the population is split between cruel and compassionate, then the rest can be swayed in either direction. I'd say I have created my own workable technique under those circumstances. It has proved compatible with very simple minds such as yours to the most complex—Aurora's. But make no mistake, I haven't the heart to take either lost causes in," I mutter to her.

Jezebel scoffs, "Swayed is another word for 'forced.' Not everyone wants to be cruel or to be compassionate. Compassion may dominate Aurora's heart right now, but what happens when it comes time to protect her sire? Or Tristan's? She doesn't want to hurt you, but she will to save herself. No one's story is any different than that."

I'm about to rebuttal her observation when Freya bursts in, seeming apologetic and slightly agitated.

"I can't find the vinyl. It's gone. I've looked everywhere," Freya pants.

Jezebel cranes her head back, preserving a neutral countenance. There's a moment where I think she may do something rash until the silence in the air pulls on her ear. Exposing the doom she has every intention of making me feel, she turns her gaze toward me.

"Where's Aurora?" Soft and frozen in tone, she demands.

Aurora. We've left her alone for too long.

"She wouldn't have taken it, she's far too focused—"

Jezebel doesn't wait for me to finish. She rips open the doors on the downstairs guest bedroom, allowing us to get a better look at Aurora's overturned chair and the connecting door to the dining room completely destroyed.

ELIJAH

"You have what you want. You found Rebekah. Just let me go so this can be over and done with," Tristan asks of me.

Freya glances at me over her shoulder, expectant of me to give in or to have the last word.

I shake my head at her to let her know we aren't done here. I sit in front of Tristan, leaning inward.

"Yes, but you see, I don't. It is imperative that you confess what you know. How did you know Jezebel Zhukov was alive?" I growl at him.

Tristan shakes, "What!"

"I believe you heard me."

"She— I told you... I told you she is of value to the continuation of our sirelines! One of the biggest pieces!"

"But that's not an answer to my question. Where did she come from? And how did you get to her?"

"Elijah...this is the second time he's had this much venom in his system. I think he's going to die if we don't give him the antidote sooner or later," Freya says, puzzled.

Tristan begins, "A deal was made! Aurora and I...we struck a deal with someone...a coven. We must bring Jezebel to them in exchange for a way to de-sire ourselves from you! A weapon! It would protect our sires from one another."

He would sacrifice Lucien and Aurora's sireline for the sake of his own. Unsurprising. I imagine he has yet to hear of this exact story.

"Who was in this coven, Tristan?" I demand.

He goes into another violent episode via his poisoned mindset, repeatedly murmuring, "Celeste! Celeste DuB—"

"Celeste?" Freya repeats, glancing at me for guidance.

That's the second time I've heard her name this week in hundreds of years. The episode is over within the next few moments. Tristan's levels of pride and serenity diminish as he withers like a flower.

"Celeste DuBois is one of the ancestors to the covens of New Orleans," I state quietly. "Allegedly."

That's when marcellus interrupts our night of entertainment. "What's next, charades? While you guys host the world's most messed-up game night, you got bigger problems."

He strolls into the room with a strut as proud as Niklaus's.

I drop my exhale like a weight as I wave off Marcellus. "Freya, would you mind dealing with this situation, please?"

"Oh, no offense to your lovely sister, but you and I need to talk. I'm here on behalf of The Strix, and I'm not leaving without Tristan," Marcel says.

I waltz out into the hallway, dragging Marcel behind me out into the corridors of the Abattoir.

"Elijah, look. The way I see it, you don't have a choice," he begins.

I remark, "Is that so?"

Marcel pauses. "How long before The Strix decide to come get their guy? And if they destroy half the quarter in the process..."

"I can handle the Strix," Briskly, I rejoin.

He pushes, "Oh, you can't even handle Tristan. He's caught in some seizure loop that girl put him in and the only thing that you can get out of him is...a bunch of words that tell you nothing about what's happening. The guy has been around for a millennium. He can withstand all your vampire mind games, and if you end up killing him, we lose Rebekah for good."

"So what are you suggesting here, Marcel, I simply hand over this wretched fiend and stand idly by as you set him free?"

"If I take Tristan, make it look like I busted him out, I get in tighter with him and The Strix. I can find out whatever you want me to and keep them from declaring war on the quarter if you trust me."

I step past him, overlapping, "I will not release that filth!"

Darkness overcomes me for more than two minutes, however, my eyes welcome nightfall when I wake up. I am stiff from the floor. I feel my forced lungs sucking in air like a vacuum. I am dehydrated, enduring the slow pressure and burn of oxygen on my stab wound. Jezebel is crouching beside me expectantly. She's holding a stake in her left hand. My gaze drifts to the empty chair where Tristan once sat and Freya barely waking up across the room on the carpet.

I remember Marcel's quick attack, his quick rescue of Tristan and his quiet word of returning for me. He didn't use a dagger or white oak stake, thankfully. Klaus appears from behind Jezebel, who smiles down at me violently.

Jezebel greets me, "Change in plans?"

MARCEL

"You have proven to be quite helpful Marcel. You have my gratitude," Tristan tells me.

"I wouldn't thank me yet... You're sure taking a lot of hits from this Seraph girl," I reply.

No one says anything, Aya grabbing Tristan's coat as he carefully stands up.

"We should go. Marcel, we'll be in touch," Aya says brusquely.

I feel a surge of frustration fall over me. I've felt it every time the Strix has reached out to me for a favor. It's been limited, but to feel the desire to lash out this early, it's incredible.

"Wait, hold up. So that's it?" I scoff. "You come into my house, threaten me, and ask me to declare war on the most dangerous vampires in the world. Which doesn't make sense to me! It seems like Jezebel is your biggest problem!"

Tristan rolls up his sleeves, coming back toward me. "I see. So you expected something more."

I continue to rant, "Damn right. You talk a lot about my loyalty to the Strix, what about vice versa! I'm a marked man."

"I assure you, we will be initiating good on—"

"No. None of that," I interrupt Aya. "You need me on your side. But if it's a friend you need, I'm not gonna be there next time."

Aya is about to lunge at me, the immediate hunger in her eyes when Tristan grabs her arm.

"You have earned something, indeed, Marcel. You are correct. Come with us," He says.

He nods his head toward my front door, and Aya is left with her foot in her mouth. She's unsure about that decision. Gleeful to see it, I grant her a big smile when I pass her by.

KLAUS

Jezebel ignores the cup of scotch I set in front of her.

She swears, "I won't use detail. If Aurora destroys it, I'm going to die."

Her eyes dart from Elijah's to mine. I stand between the couches in front of our coffee table while I bring my morning drink to my lips. Elijah watches our guest in confusion for a brief moment of time.

"You described the object vaguely, claiming it was us 'handing over your life to the Strix'. How do you mean?" Elijah ponders.

"My spirit is separated from my human body. It's been that way since I passed," she summarizes, eyes wandering towards Elijah. "I keep a physical presence on this plane even if I'm gone because of it. If this one gets destroyed, I can't make a new one. My human body is what holds the majority of my powers. Thing is that I don't know what happened it—it's a part of the reason I stayed when Marcel let me go. Someone needs to take the record from Aurora before she goes through another mood swing and snaps it in half," Jezebel explains.

"If you can't make a new one, who put you on the vinyl?" Elijah asks.

"Celeste had an object called the Serratura that she kept me alive on before I met you. I guess there was some damage done to my body I don't remember that she was willing to fix for me." When a second instance came where someone wanted me dead, I decided to contact a descendant of Celeste," Jezebel replies.

"Vincent," Klaus narrows his eyes.

Elijah then begins for her, "And normally, you would go and retrieve this vinyl yourself, but...?" Elijah begins for her.

"The vessel is cloaked," she tells him with a hint of accusation. "Every second I'm not in possession of it gives everyone else the ability to use it against me. I'm not so stupid I'd leave it unprotected. Especially not against you."

There is a rising hostility between Jezebel and Elijah, in which I am not entirely present to them. Here, I thought they were more or less simple acquaintances.

"Well, if you are in need of a rescue, there is a price to pay, of course. You'll have to play the role of our snake in the grass, pardon the innuendo," Elijah tells her.

She rolls her eyes in disenchantment. It brings a smug smile to my face.

Jezebel dreads asking, "What for?"

"I want you to tell us about the Murder of Seraphi," Elijah asks of her.

Her brows pull away from each other and her shoulders drop to a frozen position.

"...I told you once. Don't tell me you haven't put the pieces together," she intones.

My brother's slow blink communicates his doubt.

"You might as well hold back on the mystery, Love. While it is amusing to watch Tristan go through a seizure every time we ask, it's essential to our well-being and possibly your own. Besides, if it is as blasé a topic you make it seem, why would you spell Tristan's trap shut?" I corner her.

"Lucien Castle's Seer showed us an overbearing vision of the end of the Mikaelson line. One to fall by family, one by friend, and one by foe. Though, it's unclear if you're the friend or the foe. Or if the Murder, as it's been called, is planning to make it more transparent," I explain to her.

She takes a moment to process.

"Think of it like guardian angels. They see everything you do, and they're in charge of what happens next. The only reason you still exist is because I do. And if I don't exist, that means you stand no chance."

"Where are we going with this apocalyptic metaphor, exactly?"

"There's something I never got the chance to tell you before I was killed—"

My chest pounds like a drum when I hear the loud crack of stone. Jezebel's clutching her face, and when she looks at her hand, there's a fresh smear of black powder. Of all the consequences of bane that I've seen cross the faces and minds of my family's adversaries, I'd never seen anything like this. Like a china doll dropped by its owner, her dusty rose cheek grows a thin divide from her temple to the edge of her nose that could be drawn by pen to imitate the same width. Her eyes are wide in consternation, fingertip. I see the dumbfounded gaze in Elijah's eyes as ash slowly trickle from the mystical injury. Darkness takes over the shine of her eyes.

She notes briefly, "...Forget it. You're wasting my time. I have to find Aurora."


	6. Fate In The Deck

MARCEL

"I suppose since you've proved your worth you'd like a bigger reward," Tristan says.

I'm quiet, listening as he walks around one of my venues. He likes the tall ceilings, the rugged look of cement missing in all the right places, the amount of space he has to do his dirty work and hide at the same time.

If I can't do what he asks me to do this time, it'll just be another object I lose to his advantages.

"This one might be a little messy, seeing as no one really foresees the outcome of it, but I need you to do it because I believe you can. I want the Jezebel Zhukov's vessel. Specifically, I want you to put her back on it," he enunciates.

Setting me up for failure, it seemed like. He wants me to put a grown woman—who not only did me a gigantic favor but has a habit of doublecrossing people—with magical powers I don't have back inside of a prison cell.

"Seems like a lot of steps, especially since the Mikaelsons are in talks with her. If it isn't murky enough, it's not gonna help anybody when talks turn into handshakes. Besides, I thought the point was to release her. You were gonna trap them on the vessel, instead, for protection," I say doubtfully.

He pats the Prohibition-era bar counter, its art deco grooves a little dusty but still sharper than knife.

"Well, plans can change," Tristan states. "The vessel is well-known and everyone knows what kind of cargo it holds. Putting the Mikaelsons on it? Just as deadly to us as it would be a Seraph. All it takes is a pair of strong hands to destroy it and we all fall down. Not to mention the scenario where, let's say, the Mikaelsons are wanted alive and for use. There is a hoard of unwelcomed guests coming, Marcellus. None of which come in peace. And surely, this town and the people in it will be obliterated if Jezebel is not ready for surrender. So, trap her and save your family: us. Those unwelcomed guests want to beat you to it. I'd hurry."

Thinking it a way of sending me off, I turn my back on him, ready to get this dicey chore out of the way.

"And if the Mikaelsons should display a distaste towards our custody of the girl..." Tristan begins. "Change their mind. One way or another."

KLAUS

I couldn't get her to say a word to any of my remarks or her plans to hurt Aurora. That's something I have not considered: am I going to sanction a battle to ensue when we find her?

Jezebel takes notice of how I examine the mystical injury on the side of her face.

"Don't worry about it," she finally says. "She's trying to get my attention."

There are lots of questions zipping about in my mind like a swarm of carpenter bees, but I refrain from distracting this already reckless driver.

"On the contrary, love, the less people involved in this prophecy, the better," I state.

She cautions, "You wouldn't be quick to speak on it if you knew how much power I have over the matter."

"Well, then pray tell. Why should I root for you?"

"If you listened to me at all, you know the Murder is the thing that created you. It wasn't your mother, it wasn't some witch in your viking village—they all had to come from somewhere and it was from those things that are on the loose as we speak. Do you understand? How else is supernatural kind any different than humans? We all think there is something bigger that made us. Well, you're right. And they're fucking crazy."

So, the usual reason: She's pissed off and ready to fight.

"Let me guess. We're going to be dealing with the 'ring-around-the-rosy' theory if we don't listen to you," I comment.

She comes to a stop at a red light on the road, turning her head away from me in a composed confusion of what I'm allocating.

"What the hell is that?" She scoffs.

"In a word, once you're ashes, we all fall down."

Once we've reached our destination, she looks me over when she puts the engine of her outdated emerald car to sleep at our destination. It's the last place we've thought to look: Marcel's recycled cathedral. We're in luck for the reason that I can smell her from outside.

"I will decide when violence is to result. Consider it an example of the grip you claim I don't have. You must let me talk to her," I tell her.

Jezebel comments, "It's not your decision. She's already set a pretty hostile mood."

I remove myself from the vehicle, following her closely, until she turns to me at the entrance.

"Try to limit yourself to hair-pulling," I order as she gets out of the car.

She slams the door, looking at me through the open window.

"I don't think you would want that; the situation in which that comes in handy is much different when I'm around women," she replies.

She evokes a sheepish smile out of me, sticking her hand into her side of the car and pressing the four-door lock as though I'm a child waiting in the backseat.

I wait a moment before I undo her action, to meddle outside the front entrance.

"There you are," inside, Aurora grimaces, "Oh! How unsightly. I suppose that nasty scar is my fault, I might have toyed with your vessel a little too much."

Jezebel direly commands, "Just set it down, and we can forget about it; you've got the attention you crave, that's enough."

"So in charge and in control. It reminds me of him...Nik. In every little syllable. Maybe that's why I—"

Jezebel interposes, "This isn't about him."

"Then, why tell me to stay away from him?" Aurora's excitement stirs. "Come on, it's obvious! You are jealous of us!"

I hear Jezebel move toward her despite that devastating wildness in Aurora's voice. I find myself letting go of the golden handles of the chapel doors, listening closely.

"Is that the only claim you have against me?" Jezebel scoffs. "You know, I'm a lot more fun when I want to be. And I'm not one to turn down a redhead."

Cracking glass echoes in my ears and Jezebel groans frustratedly.

"That was a cheap shot, even for you," Aurora sighs, "You're desperate. That means you'll do just about anything for this thing! So we're going to play a little game. One I think even you would enjoy. And then, we'll see who's leaving New Orleans."

A quick snap of plastic and breaking pottery sounds. The furious flush of noise makes me quickly strut into the threshold. What I thought was a party of two was a party of ten, including eight very familiar faces that accorded to my sister's sireline. All heads turn at the sound of my shoes hitting tile floors.

I announce myself, "Stop this charade."

Aurora's red hair gleams in the moonlight as she walks closer to me in surprise.

"This is not a charade, Nik. This is an intervention. You're in danger of losing the love of your life: Me. We're finally together after so long apart, all the world before us, if we can just dodge a few minor obstacles like this nuisance of a prophecy, my brother's internment, the insufferable influence of Elijah... But what I cannot overcome is what Jezebel will try and convince you of. She means to make me the monster, but you don't know her like I do! I've waited far too long to share you now. Call me jealous," Aurora exclaims.

"I remember full well the extent of your jealousies, but what surprises me is that they extend to the rival witch. She's a weapon of ours. Aurora, you can't believe she means anything to me," I tell her.

Aurora interposes, "But I do believe it! I see it, the way you look at her. I think you love her."

I have to stop myself from looking at Jezebel while she is expecting me to escape the neutral zone of the battlefield sooner or later.

I step toward Aurora, "You know I love you, Aurora."

Aurora smiles, her cheeks reddening at my confession. Jezebel jolts to her feet when Aurora looks down at the vessel in her hands.

"I'm so glad you admitted that. I wanted Jezebel to hear it before I destroyed this," Aurora mutters happily.

"Madre mía," Jezebel mumbles below her breath, looking at the cieling, "I'll play the game. Whatever it is, it's between the two of us. I lose, you can do whatever you want. You lose, at least, you'll have legs to get the fuck out of my way. Let's go."

Aurora brightens in merit, hands clasping together cheerfully.

"Now, that's the spirit!" A dangerous note in her voice rides the chapel gym's echo.

AURORA

I explicate, "This is how you play. Each of the cards has a number on it. Since they're tarot, sometimes they are reversed. That would make it the negative value of whatever number you've drawn. If upright you pull, you've earned a positive value. We'll draw three times. Then, we'll add them and see who has the biggest number in the end. You know the prize."

I have Chantal, a sire of Rebekah's, shuffle the deck for us.

Jezebel leans back in her seat, arms crossed and dazed in fashion. She doesn't look even remotely worried. We can change that quickly. I love watching the stony one of the brood grovel like a child.

"You know, I hear a lot of things about you—"

I draw, displaying an upright six of cups. A small sound of glee escapes me as, deadened, she listens.

"Especially, about the mystery child."

Nik tries to break in, "Aurora—"

"I don't see one now. Says a lot about you," I continue anyway.

Jezebel watches Chantal fan out the cards again before her to choose.

"Just relieved it wasn't my brother's. You know how that goes," she snidely returns.

I see a simper of Klaus's face, and two of the other sires around him. It makes my stomach jump for high enough ground which I can shoot back from. She thinks she can play the calm and collected one, but she doesn't know what's coming next.

She draws an inverted nine of swords. My smile widens, though, I can see Nik's lessen in good sentiment. I'm not sure who's side he's on anymore. It shouldn't matter. The whole point of the game is to get a running start and watch the loser descend into madness.

"Now, girls, let's not be nasty," Klaus unctuously pleads with a wide smirk.

"On the contrary, it was just something I heard," innocently, I declare. "Hadn't any idea it was true."

I draw with the shiny black border of the tarot to the sky, then turn it over to reveal the star. It counts for four, that puts me at thirteen and Jezebel at negative nine. She's hanging by a thread.

I point fingers, "For all I know, that's why you could be here. To take back the father."

Klaus's guttural restraint of a laugh comes in time with Jezebel's similar cheeky grin. She has no idea the possibilities he has yet to tell her about.

I add, "I do a lot of assuming perhaps, I should ask. Do you still love him?"

Jezebel flips over another arcana piece; an upright ace of cups. Not much to help her cause. Still, she doesn't back down. Her harrowing eyes and reserved body language all in good keeping.

"Do you?" She answers with an inquiry.

"That's the entire reason I'm here. To prove that I did!" I sourly remind her.

Her eyes shoot upwards to examine mine, the thick brows on her face touching base with the tips of her might long lashes. "You didn't hear me. I said 'do you'. English isn't my first language, but I'm sure I asked in present tense."

I flip over my last card lividly, standing from the table. Three of pentacles. I've won. I've done it! This is it for her!

"Nik," I call out. "Crush it. Crush the vessel."

He who has been entrusted as a neutral who holds the prize stands from his seat, stepping forward eagerly.

"Answer her question," he demands.

Jezebel is still browsing the rainbow of cars, the other sires getting restless just watching her.

I wasn't saying anything the entire time. It was humiliating to not have a decent reason for holding back. But I had yet to accept one fact. I followed Tristan here. I came to help Tristan as any decent sister would. Klaus was an afterthought that entertained me, but the thought of him being mine again...it threw me into a state of fleeting ecstasy. Because I forgot he wasn't Tristan, that he wasn't ever going to be any more loyal to me than my own brother.

Just then, Jezebel slaps a card over on its back. The world. Twenty one points intertwine with her negative value of eight to equal thirteen. We've tied.

She stands to meet my eyes. "Don't interfere in my life and I won't interfere in yours. You're lucky I don't kill you for this."

She doesn't want revenge, or a word against me... She's just going to leave. She's going to take him with her!

I hasten over to Klaus, ripping the item from his hands at an angle and break a large piece of vinyl off the shining black disc. The crunch of ivory and fine stone echoes in the room. Jezebel holds back a noise of pain. A dark line of destruction has appeared along her collarbone and neck.

One more divide and it's over. Klaus stops my hand from bending at the wrist and taking another piece off.

He grabs me, bringing me to the outside of the cathedral at vampire speed and presses me against the wall of the back exit.

"...Niklaus!" I huff lewdly.

The wheels are turning in his mind, but to me, they are fogged over by his conflicted gaze. We're here for a reason. Show me we are, my love.

"I tire of this fantasy. You were someone I left behind years ago. I am sorry, but I cannot put up a performance for you any longer—there is nothing between us now," he scowls, slowly letting go and turning away.

I push myself up off the dirty wall where I lean, heart pounding at the noise he's uttered.

"You're just angry. Lovers fight, but I promise that we are meant to be. I can prove it-"

"You think you know me? Then, know this. If you hurt Jezebel, if you get in my way I will gladly end you. Your spoiled little mind will then associate me with the Devil, and when your memories are rendered history, maybe you'll finally see you are— Ah! Nothing to me," he viciously interjects. "As of now, I need nothing from you."

JEZEBEL

Every time I look over at Klaus in this quiet car, I can just see how he seeps in his disappointment. I light myself a cigarette, and considering it to be just the thing he needs, I offer him the very last of this week's carton. He glances at it before turning his head away.

"I prefer a hearty drink in place of something so short-lived and less effective," he recalls.

I sighed, tossing it back on my dashboard, "I know. I just thought you could use it, anyway."

I hold the burning cigarette outside my driver window, away from his senses.

"What? To cope with the oncoming set of surreal consequences of upsetting my ex?" He estimates my intent.

"Would you prefer to talk about it? Because I wouldn't."

At the stoplight, I release the smoke to my left shoulder and into the wind instead of his face. He's staring at me somewhat intently to the point where I'm convinced I lost him to different issue.

"...I told her about the child because she found the gift that I gave to you all those years ago."

Nik's not a gossip; he never has been. He likes a buildup. She had to have pressured him into torturing her with stories of me and my happiness with Klaus once upon a time. Aurora is as self-destructive as it could get in that way.

Moreover, I couldn't place the gift he was talking about until it clicked in my mind why he'd bring up the baby in the same sentence. "Why did you save it if you knew I wouldn't use it?"

He wouldn't just admit it. No, he keeps it general. "People change their minds."

I shake my head. People also remember how it happened, usually, but that's also a missing factor here. I didn't know how or when that baby came to be. But I knew what it was, and it was something Klaus needed to be sheltered from.

I leave the topic alone and stop the car in front of the Abattoir, turning off the engine. He shifts in his seat until he is facing me and my nicotine insomnia. His bodiless foam green eyes are crossing the dividing patch of flesh between my brown and green irises as if there's some special effect that tears away to expose a real expression.

"When I heard of the birth, it came with the news of your death. How can something like that be misconstrued?"

I could have given Elijah away. I could have given everything up in this car if it meant Klaus would trust me again. But my better conscience got the best of me. There was a time and place for everything and it wasn't in his back alley driveway.

I answer, "The same way everything else was misconstrued. Closed minds. And for the record, I'm not here to proclaim my love for you or get you to see things my way. I'm just here to fix my mistake."

"Which would be?"

"Not telling you the truth in the first place."

"You lack to remember, love, that eventually the truth did come out. The truth in which you were a traitor and a fraud. You hurt my siblings, you lead me along, you pretended to be a prey where you were the predator!"

When I didn't speak to that, Klaus's eyes move out the window to the crowded street of tourists hustling from bar to bar on the through street.

"How did you know it would draw?" He changed the subject. "The game."

I honestly say, "I didn't. I relied on the odds of the given task. Sometimes, that's all you can do."

I count the seconds he doesn't respond before I put the cigarette out in between my fingers and toss it outside.

"You haven't changed. Not at all," suddenly, he has to say.

I pull a piece paper with my number on it from the beginning of my blouse and put it between two of my pointy fingertips for him to take.

"We'll see. Give me a call later," I add, "we'll see how much of a traitor you think I am when you hear what I have to say. You have to listen eventually, Nik. Your life depends on it."


End file.
